From Subhanallah to Kabira, the film seemed to understand emotions I was still too young to name.
When Bunny returned to Naina on New Year’s Eve, I accepted their reunion just as easily as I accepted everything else. He arrived with a ring, she said yes and the countdown began. It was romantic, complete and unquestionable.
Years later, I returned to the film expecting nostalgia. I found it in the friendships, the music and the familiar desire to pack a bag whenever Ilahi began playing.
Then I reached the ending.
The scene had not changed, but I had. What once looked like closure now felt like the film had ended at the exact moment Bunny and Naina’s relationship became complicated.
Growing up changes the questions we ask of happy endings. As a child, I only needed to know whether two people loved each other. Now, I notice everything love does not automatically resolve: careers, cities, distance, time and compromise.
Perhaps that is also what has changed about the way we think about relationships. We talk endlessly about finding the right person, compatibility, boundaries, emotional availability and building lives of our own. But once two people who have built those individual lives choose each other, there is a less glamorous question waiting: how do they build a life together?
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani gives Bunny and Naina a beautiful New Year’s Eve. What it does not give us is January 2.
The lives behind the love story
Bunny and Naina are often described as opposites. He is adventurous and outgoing, while she is quiet and reserved. But their difference is not merely about personality.
They have built completely different ideas of a fulfilling life.
Bunny wants movement. Travelling is not a temporary phase for him, it is tied to his identity and career. He wants to see everything, go everywhere and avoid being held in one place for too long.
Naina’s life is more rooted. She becomes a doctor and builds a future around stability and presence. Her ambition may not involve crossing continents, but that does not make it smaller than Bunny’s.
When I was younger, Bunny’s life was the easier one to romanticise. It looked like freedom without consequences–a new city, a new story and no reason to stop. Growing up made me look beyond the destinations. A career is not a background detail that can be moved whenever the story requires it. It is built through years of choices and eventually becomes part of who a person is.
That is true for both Bunny and Naina.
Their love is not difficult to believe. Their chemistry, affection and history make the reunion emotionally convincing. What is harder to imagine is how the two lives surrounding that love will fit together.
And perhaps that is the paradox of modern relationships. We increasingly want partners who can have ambitions, identities and lives of their own. We do not want love to require either person to disappear into the other. But two independent lives do not automatically become one compatible life simply because the people living them are in love.
Relationships then vs now
What happens the morning after?
When Bunny arrives at Naina’s door, his decision proves that he wants a future with her. But the film never tells us what that decision changes.
Will he continue travelling? Will they live in Mumbai? Will Naina alter the life she has built? Will Bunny change the direction of his career? Will both adjust their plans, or try to maintain the relationship across different cities?
We do not know who compromises, whether both of them do or whether they have discussed any of it.
That uncertainty is the problem.
Perhaps they have already found a middle ground. Maybe Bunny can continue travelling while keeping a home in Mumbai. Perhaps they will spend long periods apart. One of them may even be genuinely willing to change course.
All these possibilities could work. But they are answers the audience has to invent because the film stops at the proposal.
It does not need to give us a detailed plan for every year of their future. It only needs to give us some reason to believe that their different lives can coexist.
Because choosing each other is not necessarily the end of the difficult part of a relationship. In many ways, it is where the difficult part begins. Who moves? Whose career takes precedence? How much distance can two people tolerate? What does supporting each other’s dreams actually look like when those dreams pull them in different directions?
These are not necessarily signs that a relationship is failing. They are the ordinary negotiations of building a life with another person. Yet they rarely make it into the grand romantic ending.
Wake Up Sid manages to do this without explaining every detail of Sid and Aisha’s future. Sid finds purpose through photography, Aisha continues her career as a writer, and both build their lives in Mumbai before coming together. Their ending remains open, but the film has already shown us that their individual ambitions can exist alongside each other.
With Bunny and Naina, we reach the ending before we learn whether the same is possible.
Growing up did not ruin the ending
Questioning Bunny and Naina’s future does not mean they should have separated. A realistic ending does not need to be a sad one.
Growing up has not made the film less magical for me. I still want the Manali trip. I still want friendships that survive distance and the years spent becoming different people. The music can still make the world outside the screen feel temporarily inadequate.
What growing up changed was my understanding of what comes after a grand gesture.
The proposal answers the easiest question: Bunny and Naina love each other. The harder question is what that love will ask of them once the countdown ends and ordinary life begins again.
That is the part I wanted to see.
Not a breakup. Not an unnecessary conflict. Just a conversation about where they would live, what each of them wanted to preserve and what they were willing to change.
Maybe that is the part of relationships we still struggle to romanticise. Finding someone who fits your life is exciting. Building a life that fits both of you is messier. It requires conversations, compromises and occasionally choosing between two things you both want.
As a child, I wanted to board the train to Manali with them. Now, I want to know where they go when the trip is over.
Perhaps that is the difference between watching a love story and growing up with one. The characters remain frozen in the same final scene, but we return to them with new questions.
Maybe that is why the happy ending feels different now. I no longer need Bunny and Naina to have everything figured out. I just want the film to acknowledge that choosing each other does not make the rest of life disappear.
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani still gives Bunny and Naina a beautiful New Year’s Eve.
I just wish it had told us something about January 2.
(The author is an intern with The Indian Express)
What once looked like closure now felt like the film had ended at the exact moment Bunny and Naina’s relationship became complicated. (AI generated image) 
Relationships then vs now
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