This character appears in the movie for perhaps ten minutes in all. Megha’s character was initially meant to be a guest appearance, but it created such an impact when the initial rushes debuted that her screen time was extended and she was given a more pivotal role in the plot. She appears only in flashbacks and dreams throughout, but it wouldn’t be wrong to say that she drives the events in the movie – everything that happens is directly or indirectly influenced by her.

The flashback scenes featuring Megha, her lover Raj Aryan, and her father Narayan Shankar are also the movie’s most engaging ones. The main plot, centering on three college students and their love interests, seems lacking in emotional heft in comparison, and borders on the insufferable at times (Looking at you, Uday Chopra and Shamita Shetty. Oh, and special mention of Kim Sharma). The six younger leads were launched with considerable fanfare in Mohabbatein. None of them were able to make it in Bollywood. When I rewatched this movie nearly 20 years later, it’s obvious why. Watching them on screen made me feel like my brain was liquefying into a puddle.

Plot summary

Narayan Shankar is the principal of Gurukul, a college which ahs the reputation of producing stellar graduates. Shankar runs the college with an iron fist, emphasising discipline above all else, and forbidding all pursuits he deems frivolous, like music, art and dance.

Three students begin their first year at Gurukul. Soon after, they fall in love with girls they meet outside college, but cannot do anything about it, because Gurukul takes a stern view of students pursuing romantic relationships, and Shankar has been known to summarily expel students who were found to be in a relationship. One of the boys narrates a legend of one such student who was poised to be a great success, but fell in love with a girl. This girl was Shankar’s only daughter. Shankar expelled the student despite having no other disciplinary or academic ground other than him being in a relationship. His heartbroken daughter then committed suicide.

Around this time, Raj Aryan joins Gurukul as a music teacher. Shankar is initially opposed to his joining, but gives in. Aryan is very unconventional, and goes against Gurukul principles right from the outset. He believes strongly in the power of love and art, and encourages his students to do the same. He takes special interest in the three boys, and helps them win over the girls they like.

Shankar is furious that Gurukul’s rules are being breached repeatedly, and expels the three boys. It is then revealed that Aryan was the student who had fallen in love with Shankar’s daughter, and that he has returned because he felt sorry for his beloved girlfriend’s father, who was spending the last years of his life lonely and grieving. Aryan bitterly tells Shankar that though he may have won the battle of discipline triumphing over love, he has lost far more – he lost his daughter over his inflexible principles, and is now losing a man who intended to be a son to him and look after him in his old age.

Shankar is shattered, and revokes the boys’ suspension. He then retires, and names Raj Aryan as his successor. The film closes on Aryan and Shankar walking together. Shankar’s daughter Megha also walks with them, in spirit.

Megha’s navigation of heartbreak

One truly feels for Megha. We see her in Raj Aryan’s constant daydreams – he keeps no photograph of hers because he feels she is with him every moment, and she does appear very frequently, especially on lovey-dovey occasions like Holi and Valentine’s Day parties, when the students are all with their girlfriends.

But we really see her for the person she was in Narayan Shankar’s flashback. Shankar has likely been a widower for a long time. Megha, only in her late teens, has assumed the role of housekeeper and caretaker for her middle-aged father, and it is apparent that she has been doing this for some time – she inhabits the role with confidence and the ease of habit. She is introduced singing a morning aarti – she has been up and dressed much earlier than her father, who has only just arrived. She anoints him with a teeka and gives him prasad, traditionally the duty of either the mother or the wife. She then begins to reel off a long list of things she has done for her father – she has made him his morning tea, kept it by his chair along with the newspaper, arranged for his meals, and sent his clothes to be ironed. Shankar listens passively, clearly used to having his chores done for him. Megha is the antithesis of a pampered daddy’s princess!

She adds, as an afterthought, that it is her birthday, and her father can wish her, if he wants. Shankar is clearly not winning any Father of the Year awards – he has forgotten it is her birthday. He even says as much, calling himself the world’s worst father. But Megha evidently cares for him both physically and emotionally – she lets him off the hook immediately, assuring him he is the world’s best father.

The unfortunate Megha has an admirer, Raj Aryan, who has spotted her during a field trip. He sends her a note on a dry leaf, and she accepts almost immediately. Not very realistic, but par for the course for Bollywood. The young couple spend a few blissful stolen moments together, but are soon discovered by Shankar, who seems to want to step up his game as the world’s worst father. He gives his daughter the impression that he is not opposed to her relationship, and then expels Raj Aryan, ensuring that she has no way to contact him.

The positively angelic Megha is seen performing the same morning routine she has been doing for years after hearing of Aryan’s being expelled and gone forever. She does the morning aarti, makes her father his tea and breakfast, and gives him her usual morning report. The only sign of strain she displays is red-rimmed eyes, from a night spent crying, and tears which still threaten to overflow at times when she speaks. Her father praises her composure and how easily she has acceded to his wishes, without trying to see how affected she is. It has affected her tremendously, though, because that is the last he sees of her. Megha commits suicide by throwing herself off a balcony the same day.

Megha’s character is not meant to be relatable – we see her only through the eyes of Raj Ryan or Narayan Shankar, who both idealise her. But it is hard not to feel terrible for Megha, despite her complete perfection and flawlessness. Her entire life, she has received next to no nurturing from her distant father, and when she does find someone who seems to truly care for her and is capable of fulfilling her emotional needs, he is snatched away from her. But this is what we expect from our young women as a society, I suppose – for them to exist on the margins of men’s lives, and never have needs and feelings of their own. When their needs assert themselves, as they inevitably will, they must suppress them brutally, lest they make the men uncomfortable, or cease to exist altogether.

The takeaway

We’ve been coached since infancy to aspire to the same perfection Megha portrays in Mohabbatein, and I’m guilty of forcing down and bottling up my emotions and opinions on several occasions, because I didn’t want to rock the boat. I’ve done this both in the family, and in my relationship. This suppression gave me no strategies to cope healthily with conflict and negative emotions, and I’m trying hard to work on this.

I have a feeling I’ve been idealised in much the same way as Megha was, by my ex-partner, especially. But I have to take some of the blame for it, because I let the illusion continue, and put unreasonable amounts of pressure on myself to live up to the image. This caused strain to the relationship as well. It left me feeling resentful, and when I tried to assert what I wanted and how I felt, my partner was taken aback and couldn’t reconcile this side of me with what he had been used to for so long. But being ideal comes at a great cost – the woman must cease to exist altogether as a human being, and forever subsume herself to what the other person wants. That is not a life I want, and I will try and be more authentic going forward, in everything. It will cost me some relationships, but I am better off without unrealistic expectations thrust on me anyway.

 

 

 

 

Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na is a great film to mark the beginning of the new era in Bollywood, also signalling changing social attitudes towards young women and relationships in India. The relationship in this movie is not mediated via the pressures of family and honour; the problems caused are purely due to individual personalities. This made the characters and their dilemmas relatable to upper middle class urban young people, who saw their own lives mirrored in the film, and made the film an unexpected hit.

Plot summary

Aditi and Jai are as different as chalk and cheese. Aditi is quick tempered and ever ready to get into a fight. Jai is peace-loving, calm, measured, and hates fighting. Despite their differences, the two are best friends, and spend every waking moment together. Everyone around them – their parents, their college mates, their gang of friends – think they make a great couple. Aditi’s parents even invite Jai over to formalise their relationship and arrange for their wedding. The two friends are horrified, and worry that this perception might cause issues with potential partners in the future. They decide to find each other their ideal partners, so that the other is above suspicion.

Jai finds a girlfriend soon after when the friends are at a local pub – he saves Meghna from being harassed by two men without resorting to violence, and she is impressed. An unexpected fallout is that Jai starts to behave with Meghna just as he used to behave with Aditi, and spends disproportionate amounts of time with her. This leaves Aditi feeling neglected. When she points this out to a common friend, she tells her that Jai was always this way, except that he focused his full attention on Aditi instead of Meghna. This makes Aditi realise that she has feelings for Jai.

She can’t possibly break up Jai’s relationship, though, and decides to start seeing the son of a family friend, Sushant Modi. He initially seems perfect for her – he is virile, tough and manly – the picture of her dream man. Her brother tries to intervene, but Aditi ignores him and gets engaged to Sushant.

At the birthday party of a common friend, Aditi introduces Sushant to the gang as her fiance. All the couples pair up for a slow dance, and Aditi struggles with seeing Jai with Meghna. Jai, too, is unpleasantly surprised with Aditi getting engaged. Sushant kisses Aditi while they are dancing, and Jai is so upset that he abruptly leaves the party. Meghna tries to cheer him up, but he shouts at her, calling her childish and unrealistic. Meghna is very hurt, and tells Jai that her habit of constantly making up childish fairy stories about the world around her is a defence mechanism she evolved to cope with her parents constantly fighting. The next day, they decide to break up.

Meanwhile, Sushant, who suspects Aditi has feelings for Jai, forces her to confess, and ends up slapping her. Aditi breaks up with him, and decides to leave the country and her heartbreak behind. She enrolls for a course in New York to study filmmaking, to this end.

Jai hears that Aditi is leaving the country, and goes to meet her. He sees her bruised, and immediately realises that Sushant physically abused her. He goes to Sushant and thrashes him, indulging in violence for the first time in his life.

He is arrested for this, and meets the same men who were harassing Meghna when he first met her. They turn out to be village yokels with a specific mission – to be arrested. They tell Jai that they are from a very well connected family, and hence find it impossible to be arrested in their hometown. They move to Mumbai, where they are unknown, so they can be arrested. This was why they had been harassing Meghna. When Jai hears the name of their hometown, he realises that they are his longlost cousins, Baloo and Bagheera. His cousins explain that they wanted to be arrested so desperately to fulfill all the criteria required to be considered a real man in their clan. These criteria are to ride a horse, get into a fistfight, and be arrested. The two have finally fulfilled all the criteria, and Jai has fulfilled two – getting into a fist fight and getting arrested.

Jai explains the situation with Aditi to his cousins, and they offer him a horse so that he can get to the airport, despite an ongoing transport strike. They also get him released from jail by making calls to an important politician.

It is Jai’s first time riding a horse, but he takes to it naturally, and rides to the airport. Aditi has already checked in and cleared security, and Jai cannot speak to her. He breaks through security, and sings her the song he had always said he would sing only to the love of his life, when he found her. Aditi is delighted, and decides not to go to New York.

The closing scene takes place several months after. Jai and Aditi are now married, and are returning from their honeymoon, while their friends wait to receive them.

Aditi’s navigation of heartbreak

Aditi’s heartbreak is interesting, because it is one of the rare ones in Bollywood which is not caused by a disapproving parent/guardian. It is also a heartbreak occasioned by a relationship she had never acknowledged until half the film, further complicating how she expresses it outwardly.

She is initially only threatened and feels left out by Jai’s sudden and complete devotion to his girlfriend. She tries to get his attention by “playfully” breaking the couple apart by doing things like interrupting them when they are cuddling. She refuses to admit to herself that her actions stem from something far deeper than just wanting to tease her best friend. She realises this when a common friend points out Jai’s tendency had always been to attach himself to one person – the only difference is that she has been supplanted.

Even when she grows aware and accepts her true feelings for Jai, she cannot express them outwardly, because she is ashamed. After denying being in love with him for so long and so vociferously, she cannot do a complete turnaround now, when Jai is in a happy relationship.

Her response to the situation is largely summed up in this song:

She asks herself “jaana na jaana, kaise maine na jaana, yeh pyaar hi toh hai” [how did I not realise this was love?]

But it is too late now. Aditi has never been passive, and possibly for the first time, she finds herself in a situation about which she simply cannot do anything. There is nothing to do but watch silently; allow herself to accept her blindness and get over the grief. She is perhaps too young and inexperienced to realise this, however. She must act; she must feel she is doing something so she can give herself the impression that her life is still under her control; she is still moving forward. So she jumps into a relationship with a man who seems impressive on the surface, without delving too deep into his personality. She commits quickly, even getting engaged to him. She tries desperately to lose herself in this new relationship, only to realise, when she comes face to face with Jai after a long time, how completely useless all of it was. She finds herself still inexorably in love with him, and it causes her pain to see him in love with Meghna. It is at this stage she realises all her frenzied activity cannot help her get over Jai, and breaks down.

Sushant’s physical abuse surely was a horrific shock for a cosseted young woman brought up by liberal, adoring parents, but her continued state of being off-colour is due to her grief over Jai. She barely seems to register Sushant’s abuse or his leaving her life. Her new understanding of her grief brings her a measure of peace, though. She continues to grieve, but realises she has no answers for when, or if, this grief will ever end. She decides to focus on on other areas of her life instead of wallowing, and finds herself an opportunity for a clean start.

The takeaway

Several of Aditi’s dilemmas were relatable to me. The circumstances of my relationship were different, and my family’s reaction to it was very different, but I saw several of my own actions mirrored in her behaviour.

I was in denial for a while, too, and got into another relationship for the most superficial reasons. Of course, it fizzled out, and like Aditi, I had to deal with the consequences of committing too quickly.

I also recognise the urgency to act, to always keep doing something, because that way one feels that one still has some control over one’s life, and that things aren’t at an absolute standstill and are actually moving. Even if the direction they are moving in is the way to hell. But hey, no time to pay heed to these details when you are caught up in a frenzy of activity!

I am only recently learning that everything is not solved by doing. Sometimes, the only thing to do is just be. I have to accept the way things are, without thinking of the past or worrying about the future. I have to force myself to stay in the present, feel the grief, the emptiness, the lack of meaning life seems to have. Because that’s all there is to do, really. All the running and chasing in the world will not bring him him back.

The other thing to do is to focus on other aspects of my life. Travel solo. Learn new things. Exercise. Stop putting things off for “later”. How Aditi deals with grief here, by applying to study in New York to give herself a new start, seems like an approach several young women (let me qualify: urban area-dwelling, economically independent) take. It’s a wise idea to put relationships on hold for a while, and put my energies into becoming a better version of myself.

It is hard, to be honest. I am low on motivation, and I am constantly freaking out about the future, and there are always days when his absence makes everything meaningless. But one foot in front of the other. One day after another.

I have been consistently talking of the pressures of young women dealing with heartbreak when they weren’t allowed to be in a relationship in the first place, and how this affects their outward display (or lack) of mourning.

Naina’s story arc forms a minuscule part of the sprawling plot of the beloved K3G, but I thought it would be interesting to analyse how a young woman would be shown to navigate heartbreak if the relationship was socially approved and parentally sanctioned. How does the Bollywood heroine react when she no longer faces the pressures of bagaavat and family purity?

Plot summary

I will not delve into the larger plot of the movie, because it is irrelevant to Naina’s character arc. She exits from the movie after her subplot ends, so knowing what happens afterwards is unnecessary.

Naina has been in love with Rahul Raichand for as long as she can remember. When Rahul’s father approaches her father to arrange their marriage, Naina is over the moon. But Rahul has fallen in love with Anjali, a poor unsophisticated girl from Chandni Chowk, and thus, is far from pleased at the news of his marriage being arranged without his even being consulted.

He takes her aside to speak to her privately and get their alliance called off. His less than enthusiastic reaction tips Naina off to the heart of the matter – Rahul is in love with someone else. She preempts his confession, and admits that she has loved him her entire life, but in life, one can hardly expect one’s love to be returned all the time. She urges him to go get the woman he loves.

Rahul is deeply sorry for the pain he has caused his childhood friend, but is heartened by how well she has taken the rejection.

There is no happy ending in store for Naina – Rahul does not realise years later that she was his true love all along, and return penitently. Nor is there a second hero who materialises to make her realise her love for Rahul was merely an infatuation. Naina simply fades out of the narrative after the scene in which she is rejected.

Naina’s navigation of heartbreak

We do not see how Naina deals with the fallout of her rejection after Rahul leaves. It can be argued, also, that Naina’s heartbreak is not the same as the heartbreak which ensures after a loving, requited relationship ends. The hurt isn’t any less, though, as is apparent from her obvious grief at letting Rahul go. Even as she tells him to go chase the woman he loves, her voice breaks, and she is crying. Hers is a very mature approach to love and heartbreak, though – she knows love cannot be forced, and lets go gracefully.

The takeaway

Bollywood loves good girls and the “parents know best” trope. Hell, this movie has the tagline “It’s all about loving your parents”. In this context, it is a wonder that Naina’s story arc resolves itself as gracefully and unproblematically as it does. Naina’s heartbreak does not turn her into a vamp; nor does Rahul return to the “good girl” his parents chose for him after realising the girl he loves is a vamp. In a movie adored and mocked in equal measure for over-the-top unrealistic scenarios and characters, the Naina–Rahul equation is the closest thing to real life.

We must contend, too, with what Naina has to – “Zaroori nahin hai ki jisse main pyaar karti hun, woh bhi mujhse pyaar kare.” [It is not realistic to expect that the one I love, will love me back in return]. We do not have the motivation or the luxury of resources to turn into vamps who dedicate themselves to sabotaging the hero’s relationship; nor can we sit around waiting for the eventual possibility of his return. We must move on, as Naina does.

Naina’s character is refreshing, because little as we know of her, we do not see evidence that she is dehumanised and objectified as much as even protagonists are. Everyone around her seems to recognise her value as an individual, even unattached to the male protagonist. This value makes her secure and grounded – Rahul’s rejection certainly saddens her, but she doe snot lose sense of who she is. She is still able to think rationally, make the right decisions, and even support her childhood friend. It is a nice commentary on what women, and relationships, can be if only external pressures of family honour, parental control and gender-centric subjugation are removed. We cannot erase heartbreak from the world; as humans, it is our lot to feel. But if only we were allowed to just be, perhaps the grief would be a little lighter to bear.

When you lose a person, you don’t just lose them—you lose an entire world.

It is this way for me. After my breakup, I missed my partner terribly. Years later, I still do, just as terribly. It is less constant now, more like a sudden stabbing pain which will creep up from nowhere, and overwhelm me. But a larger, continuous battle is against the world they took with them when they left.

In the days which followed, I no longer knew who I was. We were hardly a clingy, together-all-the-time couple—we were in different professions and had established separate hobbies, interests, personalities, and social circles. And yet, all my other identities seemed to come unmoored after my breakup and hung separately in the air, like so many helium balloons. For a proud, largely self-sufficient feminist, it is a chagrining discovery to make—that the thread which held together all your many selves was your relationship. It is not something I have still been able to figure out completely; nor do I feel completely whole yet. But mostly, the helium balloons stay close together, at least, within arm’s reach, and very rarely seem as wildly adrift as in the initial days.

My conception of my long-term future has not had as good a recovery. This is what took the hardest hit, after all, and though it has been a while, I still have no concrete answers to “Where do I see myself in 25 years?” My partner and I fell in love when we were very young, and we were together for longer than a decade. We learnt to grow up with each other, and when we dreamed of the future, it was always in the singular—a future. Because we were to share it, for all time. There were no separate futures; there was no “yours” and “mine” in the long term, only an “us”. Discussions on the future grew from rose-coloured teenybopper fantasies to more mature conversations on career trajectories, where we would settle, planning investments and a family.

“Shaadi ke baad yeh karenge, shaadi ke baad woh karenge…aisa ghar, waisi balcony, aise parde…”
[This is what we will do after we are married…and this! We will have a house like this…a balcony like that…curtains like those…]

This is not us. This is a line from Jab We Met describing the world its heroine, Geet, has built in her head for an “us” which fails to materialize.

This is what drew me to rewatch Jab We Met—how to navigate the loss of an entire world. It was no less real because it was a dream; it was in some ways, more real than the present, because I was making myself into someone who would inhabit that world, not preparing to indefinitely live in the world I was in at the present.

Plot summary

Aditya Kashyap is besieged by problems. His business, inherited from his father is failing. His fiancee has married someone else. He finds no joy in his work. In a haze of depression, he stumbles into a railway station and onto a train, without knowing where it is headed to.

This is where he meets Geet, his loud, talkative, oversharing co-passenger. He truly gets to know her, however, when he gets off at a station, again without knowing which one it is. The train has begun to pull out of the station, and Geet assumes he is being left behind. She gets off to alert him, but in the process, ends up missing the train herself. She forces Aditya to find a way to ensure she reaches her destination, considering she missed the train because she was trying to help him. Aditya finds her a taxi and drops her off at the next station, but Geet narrowly misses the train again. Aditya and Geet are forced to make the rest of the journey by road. Gradually, Geet’s vivacious personality grows on Aditya and he finds himself coming out of his shell. When they finally reach Bhatinda, where Geet was travelling to, she invites him to stay a few days at her family home, as a token of her thanks. Aditya complies, and spends a happy couple of days socialising with her family. But one night, he is abruptly woken up by Geet, who declares she is running away to be with her boyfriend Anshuman in Shimla.

Aditya is horrified, and tries to dissuade her, but ultimately decides to join her. They journey to Shimla, Geet deliriously happy at the thought of reuniting with her love. Aditya, meanwhile, finds himself falling for her, but can say nothing. He accompanies her until Anshuman’s house, but cannot bring himself to actually witness her with another man, and bids her farewell just before she meets Anshuman.

He returns to his old life with a renewed spirit, and works hard to revitalise his business and personal life. Just as he seems to be settling into a routine, he receives a visit from Geet’s family, who demand that they be taken to see Geet. A shocked Aditya learns that they are under the impression that Geet eloped with him, and that they are now together, and also that Geet hasn’t gotten in touch with her family in the 9 months she has been away from Bhatinda. He leaves to Shimla immediately to track her down and find out what happened. In Shimla, he meets Anshuman, who refuses to acknowledge he even knows Geet at all. Eventually, Aditya is able to coerce Anshuman into revealing what happened. Anshuman recounts that Geet’s abrupt arrival caught him completely off guard, as he had only treated their relationship as a casual fling. He dismisses Geet as childish and immature, and that he had never made any promises to her regarding a joint future; any thoughts of marriage were all Geet’s.

Aditya is stunned and pained, and manages to find Geet working as a school teacher in the same town. She is considerably changed—her verve and zest for life has vanished. Anshuman’s rejection and her broken dreams have reduced her to a shell of her former self. Aditya is saddened, and resolves to restore her to her former self. He persuades her to return to her family, but just before they are scheduled to leave for Bhatinda, Anshuman turns up at the hotel where they are staying, and apologises for his behaviour over the past 9 months. Geet is confused over whether to accept his apology, but Aditya, realising she still has feelings for him, tells her to give him a second chance.

Aditya, Geet and Anshuman leave together for Bhatinda. They receive a warm welcome from Geet’s family, but find that the family assumes that Geet is with Aditya, not Anshuman. While the three grapple with how to break the news to Geet’s family, Geet realises that her feelings for Anshuman no longer exist. She finds that Aditya is the right man for her, and breaks it off with Anshuman as a train whistles past, mirroring the background sounds of their first meeting.

Geet and Aditya marry in a Sikh wedding ceremony, and are shown to be very happy together, with twin daughters.

The Geet way to navigating heartbreak

As viewers, we are just as shocked as Aditya is to hear from Anshuman that he had no intentions of ever marrying Geet, after hearing her talk incessantly of nothing else for the first half of the movie. We are then saddened to hear him describe how plainly he saw Geet’s dreams of their joint future, and how he never thought to tell her he didn’t share those dreams with her.

Our sadness deepens when we see the impact the loss of her dreams has left on Geet. Geet never describes Anshuman’s personality as such; her thoughts are completely on the future they will create together. When she is rejected, she is rudderless. She was so sure that her life would pan out a certain way, and had never even thought to account for what she would do if it did not. We do not see Geet mourn the loss of Anshuman as a person; what she has lost is herself. Or more accurately, what she envisioned as her future self. In a very telling line, she asks Aditya who the woman is he likes and is doing so much for. She no longer knows who she is, when she finds that she is no longer Anshuman’s girlfriend, his future wife, the owner and doer of the domesticity she was so sure of having.

The takeaway

Real life has no convenient solutions or rescuers for those of us who find themselves stranded in the future, looking nothing like what we thought it would look like. But there is merit in gradually forcing ourselves to do what came seemingly spontaneously to Geet—to find what we are. What is the core of our personality? Is. Are. Am. Not “should have been”. And then try to find what balances that out best, like Aditya’s stability balances out Geet’s exuberance.

The balance will not come in the form of handsome, wealthy business magnates (at least, it is unlikely). There must be other avenues. Friends, family, new hobbies, changing jobs and cities, haircuts, wardrobe revamps. Until somehow, someday, brick by brick, slowly and painfully, a new city is laid out on the ruins of what once was.