The Unusual Valentines
Roses from an anonymous sender delivered at the doorstep, strumming the guitar for her by the quay, her strawberry pink lips caressing his two-day old stubble – Bollywood is a montage of mushy sequences like these. But there are a few unusual love stories where the Valentines had to battle through past traumas, insecurities, loneliness, physical disabilities, and orthodoxy. Whether they won or lost in love is best left to interpretation and is immaterial. Their story of their battles themselves made for extraordinary romances.
Guide (1966) – an ornate tragedy - Dancing talent Rosie is a self-respecting
woman who walks out of her much older and chauvinistic husband to live
with the charismatic young tour guide Raju, much to the outrage of the
society. But the undeterred Raju plays an active part in Rosie’s elevation as
an acclaimed dancer. Money and fame pour in. Unable to handle success,
Raju gets into drinking and gambling. Rosie becomes uncomfortable with this
and distances herself from him. Raju tries to break this ice curtain and begs
her for the same warmth and love. His fear and insecurity of losing Rosie
makes him commit a forgery and he gets jailed. Upon release, Raju lands up
in a village where he is assumed to be a godman whose 12-day fast would
bring rain to the drought-hit village. This torturous fast down to imminent
death is Raju’s true penance. Rosie comes to the village to meet him. As life
ebbs out of Raju, it pours with rain. The villagers rejoice while Rosie weeps
over his dead body. Raju had won back her love.
- Khamoshi (1969) – nursing love - On getting dumped and humiliated by the
opportunistic Sulekha, poet/writer Arun recedes into acute mania that
included violent outbursts. In the mental hospital only nurse Radha can
control Arun since she has the experience of having miraculously cured
another patient Dev with a similar mental ailment in the past. That treatment
had required Radha to give personal care to Dev, including motherly love. On
getting cured Dev, despite his gratitude towards Radha, marries another
woman, leaving Radha shattered because her love for Dev had been genuine.
Not wanting to go through another break-up Radha refuses to take up Arun’s
case. After much persuasion, Radha responds to the call of duty knowing
fully well that what fate held for her. Arun is quickly cured of his trauma. But
since Radha’s love was not pretense, the woman in Radha is unable to take
this impending separation from Arun. Now, she goes insane. But a grateful
Arun promises to wait for her for the rest of his life.
- Barfi! (2012) – dumb charades – Lovely young Shruti finds in the deaf and
mute Barfi a rare honesty in the way he declares through sign language that
he had lost his heart to her. His was more an act of dumb charades rather
than a projection of a disability. Barfi’s communication is unalloyed by
ambivalent language or selective listening. Ironically it is Shruti who, despite
normally functioning vocal and aural faculties, cannot prevail upon her
parents and is married off elsewhere. But destiny brings them back together
six years later. By now Shruti is estranged from her husband and Barfi’s love
interest is his childhood friend, the autistic heiress Jhilmil. This unusual love
triangle progresses with a fascinating chemistry between the three despite
varied communication standards. At the climax of the plot layered with
confusions and conspiracies, Shruti has the chance to take Barfi away for
herself by taking advantage of his deafness. But she stops and signals to him
with her eyes. He turns around and sees Jhilmil calling out to him. Barfi and
Jhilmil reunite forever. Having made the sacrifice, Shruti remains their well-
wisher forever.
- The Lunchbox (2013) – Process (in)efficiency – An estimated 5000 Mumbai
Dabbawalas transport 200,000 lunchboxes with home cooked food from
homes to workplaces every day, their process efficiency estimated to be a six
sigma one i.e. a mere 3.4 wrong deliveries per million deliveries. Ila’s
lunchbox packed with delicious food meant for her husband Rajeev landing
up with the elderly widower Saajan Fernandes instead was one such error.
The path to a man’s heart is through his stomach, they say, especially if the
man is a loner like Saajan who is close to retirement from his mundane desk
job, with nothing exciting to look forward to. The realization of this wrong
delivery opens a communication between Ila and Saajan through handwritten
notes delivered in one of the compartments of the lunchbox. They learn that
both are lonely in their own way and soon discover an emotional anchor in
each other, albeit a faceless one. Months roll by. Saajan and Ila may finally
meet, after all – with help from the dabbawalla who made the welcome
mistake in the first place.
- Badhaai Do (2022) – Rainbow romance – Alan Turing, the brilliant
mathematician was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts and made to
undergo chemical castration. He died two years later from suspected suicide
by poisoning. Ramchandra Siras was a linguist and author and a Professor at
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). In Feb 2010, a TV camera crew caught him
having consensual sex with a male rickshaw puller and was suspended by
AMU for gross misconduct. Siras won the case but died soon after in a case of
suspected murder. In Badhaai Do Shardul has a break-up with Kabir but
finds a new lover in Guru Narayan. Meanwhile Shardul’s wife Suman falls in
love with Rimjhim. Their families are aghast and scandalized at their sexual
orientation. But they learn that this is the new era of Inclusivity. Shardul and
Suman adopt a baby and Rimjhim and Guru Narayan join the adoption ritual
too. As the LGBTQ community take out a brightly colored rainbow parade
with placards reading ‘I am proud of my gay son’, one wishes Turing and
Siras had lived to see the film