Rohit’s first glimpse of Chandni is at a friend’s wedding. As the enchanting woman, dressed in a resplendent red lehenga, dances stirringly to ‘Mere Haathon Mein’ — a slyly worded song that illustrates the anxiety of a bride on a wedding night, he is mesmerised. He throws a dupatta around him, sneaks into the all-women gathering, and takes several pictures of her. And in the very next scene, he pulls her towards him and proposes to her in no uncertain terms. Chandni (a charming Sridevi) blushes, and the love story begins.
In Netflix’s The Romantics, a series that chronicles the evolution of the Yash Raj legacy, actors and critics rave about how Chandni (1989) opened the doors for romance in Hindi cinema. But more than three decades since the film came out, you realise that this ‘epitome of romance’ hasn’t aged well past Sridevi, draped in pristine white, dancing in the rain in picturesque Switzerland.
With The Romantics starting conversations around the Yash Chopra reign in Bollywood and how he had been instrumental in bringing romance back into Hindi cinema, we revisited a few of his popular films to see how he depicted women on screen. It is said that every Bollywood heroine wanted a Yash Chopra film in her CV, because he made them look the most stunning and delicate on screen. How do you remember a Yash Chopra heroine? Cavorting in plain chiffon sarees on top of the Swiss Alps, or doing the tandav in white Amrapalis? Or the whimsical fantasy of every hero who is enamoured by her beauty?
Though it was Yash Chopra’s Deewar (1975) that reinforced Amitabh Bachchan’s angry young man image in Hindi cinema, it was when the filmmaker started exploring romance that he came into his own. Chandni is one of the earlier films that makes plain Yash Chopra’s obsession with female beauty. Rohit’s (Rishi Kapoor) love, or rather passion, for Chandni is entirely centred on her physicality. It’s there from the moment he sets eyes on her and says, “Even the creator, while making you, might have weakened his senses momentarily. The word beautiful isn’t enough to describe you.” Not only does he declare his love at their very first meeting, but he also assumes that the feeling is reciprocated.
One can maybe argue that men tend to use flowery language to better their wooing game. But here, Rohit’s almost wanton obsession with her beauty reflects in his actions as well. The romance is so superficially projected that when the ensuing breakup happens, you are left cold, not shattered.
Later in the film, Chandni shifts cities after Rohit, who is in a wheelchair, tells her to get out of her life. When she finds a job with Lalit (Vinod Khanna), who is living in the memory of his dead spouse, it goes without saying that he too will fall for the beauteous Chandni.
Chandni is placed as a woman with no agency. Even when she stays loyal to Rohit, who never bothers to contact her after their split, she agrees to Lalit’s proposal because she doesn’t want to hurt him. As expected, Rohit’s path to recovery coincides with his returning obsession with Chandni’s beauty, as he starts to intensely fantasise about a white sari-clad Chandni drenched in rain. And when an entitled Rohit comes back, fully expecting her to welcome him with open arms, Chandni's reaction isn’t that of a betrayed lover. Instead, she beams happily at him as if he had cut short his business trip to come back to her. In the end, it is to be understood that Lalit would have gracefully made way for the star-crossed lovers to reunite.
Interestingly, the initial idea for Chandni had her walking out of an emotionally abusive marriage, leaving behind her husband and son, and marrying Lalit. In the climax, her son attends her wedding to support her decision to pursue happiness. But Yash Chopra deemed it too ahead of its time, and stuck with a tame and almost unfair closure.
In Lamhe, which came two years later, you can once again witness this obsession with female beauty. The twin versions of Sridevi — Pallavi and Pooja — are envisioned as icons of beauty. If Viren (Anil Kapoor) is enamoured by Pallavi from the moment he sets eyes on her, he is drawn towards Pooja as she is a mirror image of her mother.
It is said that Lamhe was considered too progressive for its time. But how is the story of a young woman rallying around an older man, who lives in the memory of her mother but eventually falls in love with the daughter after a lot of drama and tears, ahead of its time? Pooja’s life, as Viren’s friend Prem (Anupam Kher) casually says, was mostly spent loving Viren. She decides at the age of five to marry her benefactor, passionately pursuing him though he makes his disinterest rather plain. True, Sridevi is bewitching as Pallavi and Pooja, but their identities solely orbit around two men. And Viren needs counselling from friends and family to reflect on his own conflicting trysts with love.
In the same film, you have a woman who relentlessly pursues Viren, though she knows that he is living in the memory of a woman who never loved him. In hindsight, Lamhe romanticises unconditional love to disproportionate heights.
In Silsila (1981), the love affair between Amit (Amitabh Bachchan) and Chandni (Rekha) is aborted by the unexpected death of his brother (Shashi Kapoor). The duty-bound young brother decides to marry his brother’s pregnant fiancée Shobha (Jaya Bhaduri). When the lovers meet again, Chandni too is married to a good-natured doctor, Anand (Sanjeev Kumar), who dotes on her. He is so smitten that he keeps talking about her beauty to anyone who cares to listen.
Amit and Chandni eventually start from where they left off, and even decide to leave their respective partners. Though Silsila never glorifies adultery, the narrative, unfortunately, trivialises the complexities of such relationships. So Amit, who has studiously ignored the needs of his partner and declared his undying love for Chandni, suddenly has a change of heart when he realises that his wife is carrying his child. Similarly, Chandni is distraught when she realises that Anand gets trapped in a plane crash and eventually unites with him.
The romance in Silsila never lingers beyond the flowery poetry, tulip gardens, and charming valleys. If Shobha is almost a pitying image of victimhood and dependency, Chandni, who finds it difficult to respond to her husband’s love, seems to have more integrity.
Dil To Pagal Hai (1997) idealises romantic love. You have a heroine who believes that “somewhere, somebody is made for you”. She buys gifts for herself on Valentine’s day because she feels that since she doesn’t have a lover, she might as well please herself. The hero doesn’t believe in love, but that cynicism doesn’t come through at any point in the narrative. At the core is a triangular love story — between Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan), Pooja (Madhuri Dixit), and Nisha (Karishma Kapoor). So Nisha loves Rahul who loves Pooja, and Pooja loves Rahul but is betrothed to her childhood best friend Ajay (Akshay Kumar). She feels obligated to his parents who brought her up, and therefore can’t say ‘no’ to the proposal.
Pooja is similar to Chandni in a lot of ways. Both know what they want but feel compelled by circumstances to muffle their desires. Like Chandni, Pooja is also painted as the hero’s ‘dream girl’ (Maya, the fictional protagonist in Rahul’s musical) — packaged as an innocent beauty with mischievous eyes, an alluring figure, and other paraphernalia. In the end, Ajay facilitates their union.
Kiran in Darr (1993) is carefree, bubbly, in love, has an elaborate wardrobe, and has a stalker doggedly after her life. Otherwise, there isn’t anything distinctive about the character, played by Juhi Chawla. She is caught between her lover who is madly in love with her, and a stranger who is obsessed with her. The stalking is disturbing and creepy and after a point, and snowballs into a battle of vengeance between the two men.
One can perhaps say that the Yash Chopra heroines were all almost cut from the same cloth. They were beautiful, dreamy, sacrificing, pliable, delicate, unambitious women who hankered for love all their lives. It is said that when Sridevi was offered Darr, she wanted to play the stalker, but Yash Chopra refused, and the role eventually went to Juhi Chawla. If the anecdote is true, it proves that he always preferred depicting women through a conventional lens. Though heroines occupied a major portion of his screen time, they were always meant to be safeguarded by men. There were some rare exceptions.
Zaara (Preity Zinta) in Veer-Zaara (2004) is a young, beautiful, gentle Pakistani woman who hails from a strict patriarchal household. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she falls in love with Lieutenant Veer Pratap Singh (Shah Rukh Khan) during a visit to India. And Zaara wages a quiet rebellion for her love. When Veer is treacherously jailed on false charges, she breaks the engagement, shifts to India, and starts living in Veer’s ancestral home, running his father’s school.
Though we aren’t privy to the battles she fought against patriarchy and family for love, Zaara wins our admiration. Even though it was for love, Zaara makes something out of her life and on her own terms. In the end, when they unite during the twilight years of their life, we are also witnessing the most poignant, and intense among all romances spun by Yash Chopra.
And then there was his swan song — Jab Tak Hai Jaan, about a young woman, Meera (Katrina Kaif), who lives in London and makes impulsive promises to god in exchange for straightening the mess-ups in her life. She falls in love with Samar (Shah Rukh Khan), a struggling immigrant. But when Samar has an accident, Meera promises not to ever meet him in exchange for his life. A disillusioned Samar takes up a job as a bomb defuser in the hope that he will die, and thus break Meera’s belief in this crazy superstition.
Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) is perhaps the most unconventional love story to come from Yash Chopra. Like Zaara, after their separation, Meera doesn’t mop around but moves on with her life, though she chooses to remain single. Another interesting portion has Meera reconciling with her mother, who left them when she was an adolescent. And it is strangely reminiscent of the original story that was written for Chandni. Meera, after feeling betrayed all these years, eventually understands why her mother walked out of the marriage.
Jab Tak Hai Jaan also includes his most unconventional heroine and therefore ironically his most unmemorable one — Akira, a documentary filmmaker who sprints around, intruding into people's lives with her boundless energy. She is the antithesis of a Chopra heroine — ambitious, assertive, and independent. For Yash Chopra, she was way out of his comfort zone. And it shows.
Neelima Menon has worked in the newspaper industry for more than a decade. She has covered Hindi and Malayalam cinema for The New Indian Express and has worked briefly with Silverscreen.in. She now writes exclusively about Malayalam cinema, contributing to Fullpicture.in and thenewsminute.com. She is known for her detailed and insightful features on misogyny and the lack of representation of women in Malayalam cinema.
Views expressed are the author’s own.