Moina !!

Dil Se.. , the Mani Ratnam classic holds a special place in my life, apart from being my most favourite movie, the masterpiece also has helped shape my outlook on love and relationships. I remember being a 10 year old when I first watched the movie, it was way back in 1998. I would like to thank my cousin, who back then was a huge Shah Rukh Khan fan for taking me to the theatre, although he wasn’t too impressed with the climax, but that was what got me drawn towards the film in the first place.

Growing up, I had been and I am still a sucker for tragedies and with both the leads ending their lives, I knew this movie was more than just a tale directed to entertain.
The 10 year old in me, who had in him this affinity towards sad and tragic endings and was already into books that portrayed stories of love, longing and despair, the movie played the perfect foil to instill in me the kind of relationship I would have wanted in my life, something beyond ordinary love and romance.

The madness of Amarkant Varma, and the twinkle in the eyes of Moina (Meghna) had set the ball of falling in love rolling. Although, it was too early an age for me to think of anything as such, but I looked forward to being in one such relationship, that meets no happy end, doesn’t end on a bitter note, but is carried forward by longing, intense passion and separation if not death.
Love at first sight was something I wanted to experience, and it never happened until I was 29.

I had been in love before, but that was more of a mental conditioning over a period of time, to live and realize that I was falling in love; I hadn’t ever fallen head over heels in the first sight itself and it took time for the feeling to get into my head that probably I was falling in love. I shall in the future have to coerce myself into falling in love, perhaps there would be a sense of societal obligation attached to it.
But then, blessed I was to have experienced the rush of being in love, to have been swept off my feet, as if I was treading on the seventh heaven the moment I set my eyes on her for the very first time and she was Moina too, as in the movie. Ahh!! What bliss !!

(Shah Rukh Khan and Manisha Koirala in Dil Se)

The movie portrayed the seven stages of love, I might have lived five of them if not all the seven with Moina in sight, like in the movie ‘She’ would defy and deny each advance but then, it was me living a dream; going through every phase of being in love : Hub, Uns, Ishq, Akidat, Ibadat, Junoon ,Maut

While, Maut seems to be evading for the moment, but I hope that would hit me too. With her now out of sight, I know that deep within a locked crest of my heart She’ll forever be the one who moved me, moved me like no one else did. I remember her explaining to me what a rice pounder meant akin to what Moina was shown doing in the movie, and as I sit back and rewind to the same scene, I let out a smile, a tear and a prayer : Stay Blessed Moina. You’ll forever be, and with ‘Ae Ajnabi’ playing in the background, it is bringing you back to me.

तू तो नहीं है, लेकिन तेरी मुस्कुराहटें हैं
चेहरा कहीं नहीं है, पर तेरी आहटें हैं
तू है कहाँ, कहाँ है
तेरा निशाँ कहाँ है
मेरा जहाँ कहाँ है
मैं अधूरा तू अधूरी जी रहे हैं

(Ae Ajnabi, Dil Se.. , Penned by Gulzar)

P.S: Thanks Mani Ratnam !!

And, as the movie ends they play a poem penned by Allama Iqbal, what better note to end than a bit of optimism that there exists a universe where things aren’t bleak.
सितारों के आगे जहाँ और भी हैं
अभी इश्क़ के इम्तिहाँ और भी हैं..