{"id":3197,"date":"2016-06-28T18:33:49","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T13:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3197"},"modified":"2016-06-28T18:33:49","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T13:03:49","slug":"20-years-of-dil-se-mani-ratnam-srk-manisha-koirala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3197","title":{"rendered":"21 Years of Dil Se: A Long Affair With Bollywood\u2019s \u201cShortest Love Story\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span><\/p><\/div>

s its lead, Amarkant Varma (<\/span>Shah Rukh Khan<\/span><\/a>) put it, Mani Ratnam\u2019s <\/span>Dil Se..<\/span><\/i> is best described as \u201cthe world\u2019s shortest love story\u201d. The film, which released 21 years ago today, completed the director\u2019s terror trilogy after <\/span>Roja<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Bombay. <\/span><\/i>But this stunning film is also remembered for a host of other reasons: <\/span>Malaika Arora\u2019s <\/span><\/a>waistline, AR Rahman\u2019s evocative music elevated by <\/span>Gulzar\u2019s<\/span><\/a> piercing lyrics, Santosh Sivan\u2019s breathtaking cinematography, Preity Zinta\u2019s debut act that gave us \u201chonka-bonka-bonks\u201d, and for generally being an inimitable collaboration that brought together Tigmanshu Dhulia, <\/span>Ram Gopal Varma<\/span><\/a>, Mani Ratnam, and Shekhar Kapur.<\/span>\n\nAnd 21 years later, <\/span>Dil Se.. <\/span><\/i>\u2014 that shed a light on human rights violations routinely carried out by the <\/span>Army<\/span><\/a> and the Centre\u2019s indifference to the state of affairs in India\u2019s North East \u2014 also remains one of the finest depictions of the all-consuming insanity of love. While most of Hindi cinema has the tendency to disguise the ugliness of love with sugarcoated <\/span>romance<\/span><\/a>, Ratnam deftly exposed the selfishness and delusions attached to this elusive feeling.<\/span>\n\nIn the film, Amar, an All India Radio journalist from Delhi <\/span>falls in love <\/span><\/a>with the inscrutable Meghna\/Moina (Manisha Koirala), an Assamese suicide bomber, determined to seek revenge for 50 years of insurgency. Both of them are fiercely in love: Amar loves Meghna so much that he is unable to imagine life without her; she in turn is blinded by her love for the cause that she\u2019s ready to squander the promise of a happy future. Both their lives inevitably end in destruction, driven by their inability to let go of their love. <\/span>\n\n

The finest point that Dil Se.. makes though, is that love is no less damaging than war.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nThe finest point that <\/span>Dil Se..<\/span><\/i> makes though, is that love is no less damaging than <\/span>war<\/span><\/a>. On one hand is the backdrop of the film: an impending act of terrorism by a set of people who have long declared war against their country. On the other, Amar wages a battle against everyone and everything in his life for Meghna. In both cases, love is the underlying emotion. You see it in the film\u2019s title track, where images of war and love are juxtaposed. <\/span>\n\nThe premise of <\/span>Dil Se..<\/span><\/i> is the theory of the seven shades of love: attraction, infatuation, love, reverence, worship, obsession, and<\/span> death<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s the reason Amar comes off as such an unlikeable character throughout the film\u2019s 160-minute-long-runtime despite his evident need for companionship. He\u2019s terrible at taking a no for a no, whether from his station chief who warns him against interviewing an extremist leader or from Meghna, who repeatedly informs him of her disinterest. He stalks her, makes her uncomfortable in public, harasses her, and risks his life in his obsessive need to end up with her. Even when it dawns on him that she\u2019d just been using him for her own reasons, he refuses to let go, giving in instead to his blind devotion. <\/span>\n\nSimilarly for Meghna, her steely determination to not even consider the life and the \u201ceight <\/span>children<\/span><\/a>\u201d that might await her, despite developing feelings for Amar, is her way of letting the intensity of love consume her. In a way, Ratnam articulates the one thing we often forget: Being in love guarantees that you\u2019re stripped of \u201cfree will\u201d and choice. If the film says anything, it\u2019s that there\u2019s nothing romantic about love.<\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s precisely why <\/span>Dil Se..<\/span><\/i>\u2019s songs (especially the exquisitely choreographed \u201cSatrangi\u201d) have a surrealistic, colourful, and an otherworldly feeling to them. They\u2019re possibly the expressions of the romantic desires that can only exist in Amar and Meghna\u2019s head, but can\u2019t translate to life. Because in their real lives, they can\u2019t afford to fall in love in isolation. It comes sullied with a lifetime\u2019s baggage of <\/span>trauma<\/span><\/a>, injustice, insurgency, and sacrifice.\n\nRatnam might have been inspired by the events in 1998, but like most of his films, <\/span>Dil Se..<\/span><\/i> is still relevant in 2019: We still continue to enforce <\/span>Hindi <\/span><\/a>on people whose mother tongue it is not. We still have people who believe that \u201cDelhi is India\u201d (just look at the Centre\u2019s apathy toward the <\/span>Kerala floods<\/span><\/a>). And more importantly, we still keep forgetting that love in the end is just negotiation.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mani Ratnam\u2019s Dil Se.. shed a light on human rights violations and the government\u2019s indifference to the state of affairs in India\u2019s North East. It also remains one of the finest depictions of the all-consuming insanity of love, and leaves you with the idea that love is no less damaging than war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":3198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[6231,6232,6192,6233,5501,1902,6234,3586],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-20-years-of-dil-se","tag-a-r-rahman","tag-dil-se","tag-jiya-jale","tag-manisha-koirala","tag-priety-zinta","tag-shah-rukh","tag-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\n21 Years of Dil Se: A Long Affair With Bollywood\u2019s \u201cShortest Love Story\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mani Ratnam\u2019s Dil Se.. shed a light on human rights violations and the government\u2019s indifference to the state of affairs in India\u2019s North East. It also remains one of the finest depictions of the all-consuming insanity of love, and leaves you with the idea that love is no less damaging than war.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3197\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"21 Years of Dil Se: A Long Affair With Bollywood\u2019s \u201cShortest Love Story\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mani Ratnam\u2019s Dil Se.. shed a light on human rights violations and the government\u2019s indifference to the state of affairs in India\u2019s North East. 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