Opinion Dear Gen Z, ‘Saiyaara’ is not what real love looks like

So, in the absence of obstacles, can there be a great love, one that makes it to stories?

Or, can you only have a Saiyaara, a product of our times where every gratification is a phone click away – even Alzheimer’s, a convenient inconvenience driving this story’s plot?

But what is writer-director Mohit Suri to do when nothing such as caste, class, religion, parents, society, even unsatiated raging hormones, seem now to stand in the way?

Whither the meaningless bus or auto rides just to hold hands? Whither the notes to be exchanged, which could catch the wrong eyes? Whither the public places and the watchful, unapproving glares? Whither the small salaries and unaffordable restaurants? Whither the long periods of not seeing, not hearing, not knowing? Whither that sudden sense of a presence, the tingle at the back of your neck or in the pit of your stomach? Whither even the lovers’ tiffs that were waged only to be resolved?

Whither, whither, whither…

However, as one raised on Shah Rukh Khan, and one raising two youngsters who purportedly inhabit the Saiyaara world, let’s give it to Gen Z that they deserve more credit than the film gives its two leads.

Just past 20 and getting married, in court? Getting dumped even as writing ever more love ditties into a notebook with seemingly endless pages? Falling for, and being whizzed around town helmet-lessly and recklessly, by a guy with anger issues? Watching gooey-eyed as the guy barges into a newspaper office and bashes up a journalist over an article, and walks away unscathed? Picking up fights with your friends and being generally a jerk, and being taken back by them, again and again?

Interning in the hope of a job and spending barely any time in office? Getting record deals and tours, and having money and success fall into your lap as you sulk and skulk your way through life? Having a curfew hour of 8.30 pm on one hand, while aspiring to be a journalist, and then enjoying days of unencumbered bliss in a seaside, wind-swept cottage with a guy, on the other? Disappearing into an internet black hole so as to nurse your Alzheimer’s in private, leaving your loved ones in the dark? And reappearing with not a hair harmed, or life interrupted for a second, out of an ashram in the hills?

As any adult would tell you, uh uh, that’s not how it works.

As any parent would tell you, even Gen Z knows that. As self-centred or myopic as their universe seems – or maybe because it is so – the young now are more preternaturally attuned against such self-destructiveness. Love may seem overwhelmingly blinding in these show-all, tell-all times, but love-blind our young are not.

And that’s not the only problem with Saiyaara. There still are love stories to be told reflecting new tensions of the new age, even on Bollywood’s slickly flattened canvas. Badhaai Do (2022), for example, about two homosexual individuals bound in a heterosexual marriage, conveyed more sizzle in just one person nudging the other with a shoe.

Plus, a better love story lies on the other side of where Saiyaara ends. Of two people living together, as one loses his or her memory — though even that is a story that has been told before (50 First Dates springs to mind, for starters).

So all the young out there, take this from a wiser, older romantic: Accept Saiyaara for what it is, a film that needs an IV shot of hype to give it a life, and not the last word on modern love.

Some things need not be “made new” after all — two people, one umbrella and a rain-soaked night; two people, mustard fields and a mandolin; or as Ahmad Faraz wrote for the ages, “maana ke mohabbat ka chhupana hai mohabbat… chupke se kisi roz jataane ke liye aa (Granted that love is all about hiding love… one day, even if silently, come show me)”.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com