Lovers of the world unite, but
first, the obstacles.
Boy girl meet-cute.
Girl boy make cute.
Happy song. The End.
That’s what a romcom would be without the hurdles. Movies would end in 30 minutes, and the productivity of most nations would increase. To the chagrin of HR managers around the world, we have to deal with an additional 2+ hours of misunderstandings, personality mismatches, neuroses, and finally a concept that would warm the cockles of even the stodgiest economist’s heart.
Aukaat.
For the longest time I thought it meant class. But, it can also mean gumption. And intellectual inferiority. Or superiority. And beauty. Or divinity. In other words, it’s like the word fuck. You can use it to mean anything.
Allow me to illustrate with some examples, but keep in mind that aukaat is something one aspires to, and can never attain. Like Tennyson talks about the horizon in Ulysses. Like the predicament of Tantalus.
Say someone cuts in front of you in a line, you say, “teri yeh aukaat!”
You slap a reality TV host, followed by plaintive cries of How can she slap, Sir? when the mob is beating you up. You will be greeted with “aukaat kya hai teri” @ 1:30
Rich Salman Khan had to prove his aukaat to poor Alok Nath, by earning a living in Maine Pyaar Kiya.
Middle Class Anil Kapoor had to prove his aukaat in Nayak by getting a Govt. job as CM!
I had to prove my aukaat to Nalini by reading Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. It took me 3 months, and in a cruel twist of fate, she had to prove her aukaat to me for making me read Rand.
Dig?
I was also under the misconception that only India has this concept. When I recently watched the classic Hollywood screwball comedies from the 40s, my good friend Aukaat was very much there. In movies like Sabrina, It Happened One Night, Love in the Afternoon etc. Part of the reason those comedies were memorable and even romantic is because folks had class or ideological differences that acted as obstacles to the lovers uniting. The story was about something, and in the process, people fell in love.
Even the French, renowned for such high ideals as fraternity and equality, succumbed to the charms of Aukaat, and made the delightful Priceless.
The biggest grossing movie of all time Titanic, is all about Aukaat. Leo has to prove it by looking and acting a gentleman with the rich folks, and Kate has to do the same by getting down and dirty by drinking beer and dancing with the coolies.
Hollywood loves romcoms because they are believed to be surefire hits, when done well. Girls go for the romance, and guys go to show their sensitive side. The one located near the pelvis.
A lot of people born in 1970-71, owe a debt to the movie overwrought sobfest called Love Story. They would watch the movie over and over again, and guys discovered that tears make for fantastic lube.
Hollywood folks believe that the poor quality of romcoms these days is because they have no great hurdle to overcome. The general populace likes to believe that problems with class, race etc., are a thing of the past, and have no place in the movies. So, instead of having real characters with real problems to overcome in getting together, we face an onslaught of high concept gimmicks.
They love each other, but but but, they live in 2 different years and communicate through a time traveling mailbox – Lakehouse featuring Keanu, Bullock.
Or, they would leave it up to fate, if it’s meant to be, as in Serendipity.
Through much of Indian movie history, class, caste, wealth, and religion served as hurdles. With India Shining however, the audience has become averse to these real problems. While caste continues to play a big role in the arranged marriage market, you could never make a movie about that. The constant refrain, “we just want mindless entertainment.”
What you have instead is a series of movies about people that are already engaged or in love with someone else, and the hero/heroine has to woo them away. Like Jab We Met, and Socha Na Tha.
Or you have the “We are very close friends, and spend every waking minute together. The whole world thinks we are in love, but no, we are just friends, but but but, in the end we will realize that we actually love each other.” aka JTYJN. This is especially irksome to me, partly because I have seen it happen all too often to close friends, who at first glance give the impression of being intelligent.
Or you have the MisUnderstanding Movie. In the MUM, a guy will perform some great personal sacrifice for his raakhi sister, to which the girl will say, “oh mere pyaare bhaiya” and throw her arms around him in some choke hold, and the hero/lover will see this from a window and will immediately assume that they were bumping uglies. Now, instead of asking her, “Lover, are you bumping uglies with this dude?” to which the response would have been a sincere and categorical, “Nahiiiiiiiin,” the hero will take it upon himself to perform endless acts of sacrifice to unite the raakhi brother-sister, and in the process abrogate his love for her. In the end, milk becomes milk and water becomes water, and the girl will say coyly to the loverboy, “tu to pagla hai,” which roughly translates to “you must be committed to a room with padded walls.”
So, here are some suggestions for obstacles to overcome.
They love each other, but are separated by the seven seas, and immigration. Boring.
They love each other, but the girl dies, and is reincarnated as a dog.
They love each other, but the guy has been turned into a tree due to some Pakhandi’s Shraap.
They hate each other, but must pretend to be in love for some reason, and will eventually fall in love, but but but, irony of ironies, the reason they pretended to be in love has somehow changed on a dime, and now they must pretend to be in hate, and will eventually end up hating each other.
He is a violent sex offender. She is the prosecution. Love-Hate. Tick Tock, the Grim Reaper Knocks.
What is your ridiculous over-the-top hurdle?
Tags: Maine Pyaar Kiya, priceless, romance, romcom
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
In honor of Om’s kind gesture of sharing some thrilling news of the world with us…..
Guy and gal madly in love. Guy gets his junk cut off in a freak episode. Will she still stand by her “man” ? Keeping in mind no miraculous transplant surgery is possible.
This idea’s been done already, but it’s a goodie: In Bunjee Jumping of their Own, a Korean movie, the boy and girl loved each other, but the girl was hit by a bus and reincarnated later as the boy’s male high school student. They loved each other anyway.
The being reincarnated as a dog story already was proposed to Shahrukh. He had us in stitches describing this movie pitch at the TIFF Mavericks event two years back. “And then, I go into the body of a dog…”
Speaking of dogs, mine insists we go out. More later.
@ mitch –
the lover girlfriend has to be the surgeon.
@ evelyn –
damn! my best ideas have already been taken.
Dabba: Here goes… The boy (or girl) is a compulsive social Web commenter, and the character does not have normal boundaries about what’s been said in confidence. Many misunderstandings ensue.
stragely enough, this one reminds me of prof saabs lingo. what u guys been doing together? :-)
Dabba- the word is “aukaat” not “aukaad”. Or, better still -”auqaat”. This word is nothing but the plural of “waqt” and literally means “times” or “circumstances”, and by extension “condition”, “power” or “ability”.
Yes, Dabba we have to look for new obstacles to overcome, your dog being reincarnated theme is interesting – what if Aditi’s cat,assuming it was a male, in JTYJN were to go into Imran’s character’s body and only say ‘meow, meow’ throughout the movie !
would she reply ” Apne aukaat mien raho”?
Dabba:
Ladki – daughter of local UP halwaii in Bombay, Ladka – MNS foot soldier. Hurdle – Raj Thackeray.
@ aditya –
corrected. thanks
@ arun –
teri yeh majaal! being john malkovich meets Jaane Tu
@ subrat –
after working a long day using our brains writing emails and answering the phone and filling out TPS reports, we want mindless entertainment. Give us some time pass yaar.
Hey how bout tis:
Girl: One of George Bush’s daughters
Boy: One of Bin Laden’s son
Hurdles: Religion, Culture, Language,parental opposition, terriorism,war on terror,politics….basically plenty of material to last atleast 5 hours…!!
Black girl – Indian guy – Caucasian girl. Love triangle. Parents wants guy to marry Indian girl. He moves to Utah
Girl: is a boy trapped in a girl’s body.
Boy: is a girl trapped in a boy’s body.
Hurdle: When they are together, it gets really confusing to say who’s the boy and who’s the girl.
Okay, correction to my first comment. I looked back on my TIFF notes and here’s what I wrote two years ago:
When Suketa Mehta asked Shahrukh to talk about some of the most ridiculous movie plots that he had been presented.
The first story involved a husband (SRK) whose wife dies, and then each time he tries to woo a woman, he accidentally breaks her banglis (bangles) and then the ghost of his wife comes to taunt him.
The second story involves an alien (SRK) who has to take on a local life form when he lands on Earth, so “I have to go into a dog and this dog speaks with my voice.” He repeated this concept of going into the dog several times, resulting in bigger and bigger giggles from the audience
Tongue in cheek…
Girl : Sallu’s daughter
Boy : Abhi-Ash’s son
@ Subrat & Narcissist..
lolz…
Boy: Asif ali Zardari
Girl: Sarah Palin
Hurdles: US, Pakistan, John McCain, US Presidential Elections,
and of course the biggest obstacle is the FATWA….