Love Aaj Kal: The Parallel Connotations of Love

“Tu Hamesha Correct Baat Bol Deti Hai Jaaneman”- Jai Vardhan Singh

In Imtiaz Ali’s 2009 film, Love Aaj Kal, there is a beautiful scene that highlights the conundrum that a majority of the people in contemporary times might have faced at some point in their life, the understanding of the feeling of love. Jo, the current romantic interest of Jai asks him “Do you love me?” to which Jai, a bit surprised by the question, and after a slight hesitation answers “Love? Who knows what that is, I haven’t figured that one out yet”. And just after the simple and what feels like a bit meaningless conversation, they both part their ways, wishing each other good luck. This is it for their romantic tale, both move on to their respective lives, without even for a second rethinking about the fragile nature of their relationship. This also, in a way defines the basic premise of the film, in which how the perspective, definition and the expression of love has evolved with time. The present situation of Jai Vardhan Singh and Meera Pandit, in London, parallel to the story of Veer Singh Panesar and Harleen Kaur from the early seventies in Delhi is narrated through a “bridge” of time connecting these two tales with the connotation of love as the theme. Jai and Meera are two independent, highly skilled people in their respective areas of work, as Jai says they are Normal Mango people, they don’t believe in immortal love, and they do not believe in making promises to be together for lifetimes to come ahead. Jai is absolutely right from his point of view, he doesn’t want to fall under the category of immortal lovers, because one, majority of them failed to live a happy life, the stories of their separation is probably what pushes the theory behind the immortality that those lovers have gained and second, is to run with the time to fulfill other internal desires that reserves their own individual importance in our lives.  These Mango people are practical in their approach towards everything and love unfortunately falls under that group. On the other side, we have our quintessential romantic couple from the notebooks of Hindi cinema, Veer Singh and Harleen Kaur who are trying to connect the ends between them to be able to live with each other. Love for them is a crucial aspect of life.

Love Aaj Kal represents the two different beliefs from which love is viewed, both totally contrasting with each other, yet the common factor between them is the feeling of not being able to live without the presence of a certain individual. Love is totally different Aaj (today) than what it was Kal (yesterday).  Jai is Aaj, the present and Veer Singh was the Kal, the yesterday, Meera is Aaj and Harleen was the Kal. Despite the dichotomy of time between these four individuals, what remains relentless is the sense of love, and more importantly, the actual realization of that feeling deep down in their hearts that this is it. The reason why this Imtiaz Ali film has stayed with me all these years is unknown to me, perhaps because of the fact that the chronicle of two different ideologies that both Jai and Veer Singh narrates gives me another opportunity to get familiar with Imtiaz’s characters and dive into the story set against the milieu of ordinary people with ordinary problems resulting into an extraordinary journey of discovering love inside themselves. 

Yeh Dooriyan, the song forms the heart of the story, a song about distance, and subsequently its influence on us and the people around us. The delicacy of long distance relationships in the contemporary times, the angst of not seeing your loved ones’ face for months and traveling hundreds of miles just to see that face in the older times. The song talks about the role of distance in our lives in terms of how it changes us. In Imtiaz Ali’s films, we have always seen that journey is far important than the destination, and it has always been the journey that allows his characters to come out of their shell, and actually be the person what they actually are. Most of the characters that travel in his films are on metaphorically layered trip to find one’s true voice, and they actually end up exploring that part of life. The song covers up all the accumulated distance the characters go through in quest of discovering the feeling of love, the four major cities where the story centers around; London, Delhi, Calcutta, and San Francisco. Each of the mentioned cities have their own charm, and plays an important role in the narrative, the cool life in London where people are mostly concerned about the traffic situations of the city, the extra madness of Delhi, where one is made to think through their hearts, Calcutta’s architectural stability comforting the romance in the air, and the urbanization of the modern times in San Francisco. Distance will remain forever, the quest to go through them, making them witness to the journeys is what eventually determines the shape of the final experience. 

    

There are lot of metaphors for transformations used in the film delicately to highlight the divergence between the characters. Yet, these are actually not different characteristics, rather a more updated version compared to the other. Veer Singh likes drinking black tea, the kind which Britishers liked, whereas Jai drinks black coffee without sugar. The transformation of a black tea from the retro period to an urban and modernized version of the drink, black coffee without sugar is a simple example of the difference and in a way, similarity connecting these two people. These drinks symbolize the two characters, both aware of the bitterness surrounded with the feeling of love, in terms of longing, separations and pain, yet both cannot help but surrender to the addictiveness of the stimulation, the feeling of love brings with itself. One likes it in a mug, while the other likes it in an old-fashioned way cutting chai cup. The vessels might be different, but the taste of love have the same euphoric effect. Railways stations guarded by ear blasting honks of coal operated engines have turned into international airports, the iconic Howrah bridge has a companion in the beauty of the golden gate bridge, the dynamics of physical intimacy has drastically changed by differentiating into the paths of need and conducts.

There are two beautiful instances in the film, where Jai and Meera uses silence to reassemble their thoughts. At first glance, it resonates a sense that the characters are reconfirming their own feelings at that point, but I realized much later that it was germs of doubt that momentarily pauses them to rethink about the whole situation, a doubt that depicts their uneasiness in responding to the situation in front of them. Meera tells Jai, that his boss, Vikram asked him out for a dinner, Jai is perplexed on how to tackle the situation, and takes a moment out to reconfirm how he feels about the situation, similarly when Meera is about confront her feelings to Jai post her marriage with Vikram, Jai breaks the news of him going to San Francisco, Meera takes a moment out to figure out the appropriate response, should she tell him about her feelings or let Jai go way in pursuit of his dreams. This use of silence makes a scene feel much more important without any usage of sound, and dialogues. The gap between audience and what is depicted on screen feels drastically reduced once a scene is projected through silence. 

Moments of Silence

In Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film ’The Departed’ Billy and Collin come in front of each other (not literally but through phones) and there is momentarily silence, which I still remember very accurately because as an audience it gave me a fascinating experience of the theme of the film. Martin Scorsese, the legendary filmmaker is famous for using silence as a medium to convey the thoughts of his characters at that particular moment, be it in Taxi Driver, where he uses silence to convey the violent nature of Travis Bickle, dark eerie nights on the streets of New York or expressing the volatile nature of Jack La Motta in Ragging Bull. Imtiaz Ali employs similar use of silence to transport audience to feel the state of the mind of his characters, be it to express the shattered, emotionally broken Aditya Kashyap, Explosion of an emotionally exhausted Geet leaning into the arms of Aditya, The numerous strong glares of silence exemplifying the solace between Veera and Mahabir in Highway, the trance like state of Jordan sitting at Nizammudin Dargah, feeling the coldness of dawn in Rockstar contemplating about his love for music and tryst for a broken heart, the desperate yet a very a calm sense of silence in Ved sitting around the mountains in Corsica in Tamasha and the silence in the yearning of home in Harry’s eyes in Jab Harry Met Sejal. On both the occasions in Love Aaj Kal, where Jai and Meera realize their doubts about the situation, they excuse themselves and figure out a way to comeback with a proper response.

The scene between Meera and Jai, around the courtyard of Qutub Minar while cutting back to the similar model of situation between Veer and Harleen at the Purana Qila. Meera wants to Jai to go away so that the space he has in her thoughts gets empty and is taken by Vikram, whereas Veer learns about the engagement of Harleen, and is shattered by the news. Now the contradictions on how both Jai and Veer perceive the news of separation is notable. Jai is quite causal about the whole situation early on, and kisses Meera, whereas Veer simply walks away with a heavy heart. In one of my favorite novel, The Zahir, Paulo Coelho wrote “When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive” I think this line blends perfectly with the way love is beheld upon in present-day times, the space in someone’s thoughts which Meera talks about is a vulnerable space, which becomes difficult to handle, and constantly torment us with the thoughts of people we desire in our lives, some people manipulate this space of thoughts, and twitch it in their favor. Talking about Meera, where do I even start, there are more entertaining, layered female characters Imtiaz Ali has written in his films over the years, somewhere the girl with the most stunning smile is lost. Meera works on Art restorations projects, and that too feels like a symbol connecting the bridge between the past and the present. She is confident, smart, and takes bold decision, and much like Imtiaz Ali’s other characters, she helps Jai realize what lies inside his heart. She understands Jai better than him, and without a doubt is more mature than Jai in terms of the kind of decision she takes. Yes, she too takes decision which are questionable (marrying to Vikram), but she should not be judged based on that one decision, it seemed like an impulsive and spontaneous decision on her part. The scene at Meera’s wedding where she calls Jai, and Jai starts explaining to her about what he is feeling at that precise moment, she does not utter a single word, on paper it is supposedly looks like Jai’s breakdown moment, but after repeatedly watching the scene, I found Meera’s silence more heartbreaking than Jai’s outburst. What I found really romantic and utterly intimate in Love Aaj Kal was the moments when both Meera and Harleen tries Black coffee and Black Tea for the first time, you could sense that they hated the drink and could not understand why their loved ones regularly kept drinking it, perhaps it was there moment to experience the bitter part of this thing called Love. In an interview, Imtiaz Ali said “I genuinely find women to be smarter than men. Women are more intelligent, aware and practical. They come up with solutions that men don't even imagine”.

Jai Vardhan Singh, in a lot of way reminded me of Akash Malhotra from Dil Chahta Hai, one of my favorite characters from Hindi Films. Akash is witty, spontaneous, no fucks to give kind of an attitude, he is someone who never believed in the magic of being hopelessly in love with someone until the moment, he himself experiences the waves of emotions inside his heart. Aakash is more concerned about his own space and believes in the motto of living by his own rules. The only characteristic that differentiate Jai from Akash is the particular dream of reaching somewhere, Jai is focused on reaching the Golden Gate, focused to such an extent that he even unknowingly let go away his love to reach there. The song “Main Kya Hoon” orchestrate the change Jai feels organically inside his heart, the smile has vanished from his face, complete tiredness has taken over his life. I feel both Jai and Akash’s breakdown moments have a bit resemblance to one another, both finally realizing that all this while, they kept ignoring the voices inside their hearts that told the fact that they are hopelessly in love with someone, and finally when those voices are heard and acknowledged, both accepts the fact. 

The conversations between Jai and Veer Singh about a lot of different aspects of love, like separation, taking a bold decision at the right, the subtleties of physical intimacy is what gradually plants seeds of realization in Jai’s heart. The point at which both of them discuss about how differently love is treat in the present day, one could easily sense the change in Jai’s tone, a bit irritated with all the nonsense around love, he explains why make love so complicated, already there are so many complex things floating around in our lives, why add love into that list. Veer explains to Jai the fundamental problem in contemporary times, that in the hope spending his life with Harleen, he became serious in his life, whereas Jai is so serious in his life that let Meera go way so that their work doesn’t suffer. Another factor that brings both Jai and Akash closer is the presence of a friend who helps them understand what it feels like to be in love. Akash makes fun of Siddharth, whereas Jai laughs at the activities of Veer Singh, and when both of them breaks down, they call their respective friends as if wanting to confess about this feeling.

Love Aaj Kal is about the ordinary stories of mango people, those with genuine flaws in them, but yet their stories are extraordinary when told through a great storyteller. Somewhere at the start of the film, Meera tells Jai, “All couple think that they are special, so actually they are just as special as all the rest” and as Jai says "Tu Hamesha Correct Baat Bol Deti Hai Jaaneman"