romantic movie story in hindi cinema

Hindi cinema’s genres are very loosely defined, with almost all films having a central romantic theme. It’s not just the romantic melodramas, the romcoms, the romantic action films… The typical story and structure of a Bollywood romance is that a beautiful man and woman meet, take some time to fall in love, then an unexpected crisis brings us to the interval. In the second half of the film, the plot has to find a resolution, taking the film to the full three hours.
There should be five to eight songs to mark nodes in the narrative, such as meeting, falling in love, union, separation and so on. Many romantic films end with the promise of happily ever after, but the key romantic moments are often those of sorrow and sadness. Love imagined, or love lost, makes the film more emotional. The songs of sorrow (‘dard bhare geet’) produce longing that was celebrated in Indian aesthetic theory as ‘vipralambha shringara’ – love in separation. For romance, tears should flow. It is no coincidence that Shah Rukh Khan, the biggest romantic hero of the last 20 years, weeps beautifully and often.
This romance set amid London’s Indian diaspora was a landmark in Hindi films and is still attracting audiences in a cinema hall in Mumbai 20 years later. Kajol and Shah Rukh Khanas Simran and Raj became one of the best-loved screen couples of all time. They fall in love on a European rail holiday, but when they return to London, the most romantic moment occurs when Simran invites Raj to come to her arranged wedding and he refuses. He follows her to Punjab to win over her family and persuade them to accept him as her husband. Among all the fun are wonderful romantic songs, such as ‘Tujhe Dekha’/‘When I Saw You’.
However, the changing views of romance in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (known as DDLJ) include Simran’s father’s view, that marriages are arranged by family elders and love will follow. The film’s opening scene shows his love for his traditional homeland and his detachment from London where he lives. Standing in a wet, grey Trafalgar Square, feeding birds while dreaming of the yellow mustard fields of Punjab, it is his views on love that change the most during the film.