Dil Chahta Hai turns 20: Akshaye Khanna's character Siddharth Sinha grounded Farhan Akhtar's coming-of-age film

Men like Siddharth Sinha are rare. Both in real life and in films. In an industry that loves to obsess over and glorify the man-child, men like Sid come once in a generation.

It has been 20 years since Dil Chahta Hai released but I still cannot think of any other character in movies that has been written and performed with as much care and control. When I first watched the film as a pre-pubescent, I found Akash funny and Sameer charming, but it was Sid that stayed with me. His sensitivity, gravitas, and deep sense of melancholy resonated with me at an instinctive level. I had not seen anyone like him on screen before. I have not since.

What was it about him that felt so familiar? His introversion? His quiet creative genius? His negation of what should and should not be? His ability to see what others disregard? Or was it his brooding self-assuredness? I could not tell then.

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When I watched the film again recently, I finally knew why. Today, two decades later, Sameer looks juvenile, and Akash’s humour feels trite. It is only Sid among the trio who has aged well. No, he has gotten better. Without him, Dil Chahta Hai would still have been a breezy coming-of-age story about friendship and love, but it would have lost its soul, its introspective quality that prevents it from being any other forgettable rom-com spun by the dozen every year.

Sid’s presence does to the film what the little motifs that he draws with Tara’s portrait do to the painting — add a whole new dimension discernable only to those observant enough to perceive it.

How Sid falls in love with Tara is so close to life that it was a breakthrough for its time. It was 2001 — glossy, larger-than-life films mounted on big budgets and even bigger stars were the norm. Tickets of soppy stories wanting you to love your family and country sold like hotcakes at the box office. Bollywood was still busy doing what it does best — normalising love-at-first-sight romances and churning out uninspired copies of old blockbusters. In a milieu and at a time like that, Sid’s slow, reflective romance was an anomaly.

Initially, just like any well-meaning neighbour, he only wants to help Tara — a divorcee much older than him — move her luggage up to her apartment. It is when he finds that she is an art aficionado that a friendship strikes between the two, a painter and an interior designer. It grows naturally, seamlessly into love after Tara — like soft sunshine — throws light on Sid’s guarded person by deciphering his paintings in a way that no Akash or Sameer could ever have. It is a remarkable scene. In finding the artist through his art, Tara unpacks volumes about Sid, herself, and his blossoming love for her. In that one scene, she gives a face, an anchor to Sid’s flights of fantasy and quiet reclusiveness.

[caption id=“attachment_9874341” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Dimple Kapadia and Akshaye Khanna in Dil Chahta Hai[/caption]

Sid reminds me a lot of Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) from Sholay. Though he is Veeru’s partner in every crime — they are both playful, uncouth, opportunistic history-sheeters — Jai is markedly different from him; he is so much more. He is mindful, contemplative. When he falls in love with Radha (Jaya Bachchan), the young widowed daughter-in-law of the thakur who has hired him as a bounty hunter, we are not surprised. Jai is nowhere the urbane artist that Sid is, but they are both brooders, with a sense of melancholy so palpable that it transcends and finds home in the viewer’s heart. The scene in which he is playing the mouth organ at sundown looking at Radha who is lighting the lamps of her haveli is among the most poignant ever shot. Again, it is the weight and the strength of Jai’s character that did not let Sholay become just another flippant revenge drama or a bromance film.

It is difficult to be a Sid in a world that celebrates men like Akash and Sameer. In a culture big on self-aggrandizement where extroverts shine and conquer, there is little space for introverts like Sid and Jai. In the first few minutes of Dil Chahta Hai, Sameer, half-smirking, asks Sid, “Aur tu? Abhi tak Poona mein apne uncle ke farmhouse par?” Introverts, brooders rarely become “successful.” They almost never get the girl (or the boy) either. Sid’s love for Tara remains unrequited, and Jai dies. But that’s the thing. They do not care much for barter. When everyone else is busy climbing up the ladder and finding a desirable partner, you will find a Sid or a Jai by themselves, trying to make sense of it all through music and art. In a noisy world, they are the solitude seekers.

Dil Chahta Hai was a landmark film. It introduced Bollywood to cool haircuts, urban, slice-of-life, narrative-driven stories (a marked departure from plot-heavy, mushy melodramas), and impromptu road trips. It also made the Hindi film fraternity sit up and acknowledge the brimming talent of Farhan Akhtar and music composers Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. But most notably, it gave cine-goers Siddharth Sinha. And through him a mature representation of the compassionate introvert, a delightful oddity in the Hindi movie-verse. Akash may be the lead of the triumvirate with the most screen time, but he is a cardboard character; he does not go beyond raffish jokes and the realisation that he has fallen for someone else’s fiancé. It is Sid who has been fleshed out with greater care, and given enough bone and blood to form a character so evolved, he feels like a person you would want to know and keep.

But Sid would not have been the guy we have grown to love and treasure without Akshaye Khanna’s able performance. In any other actor’s skin, he would have been a different man. It is not every day that a character complements an actor’s personality so fully that it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. In an  interview with Mid-Day, Akshaye revealed that he wanted to play Akash but Akhtar was insistent that he plays Sid instead. I can see why. Sid is so unmistakably Akshaye that it is difficult to see him in someone else. It was a brilliant casting decision — Akshaye infuses Sid with his personal mystique and solitariness so completely, and with such sensitivity and nuance, that even two decades later, he feels as genuine and endearing.

Twenty years ago, seeing Sid on screen, I, who was struggling to come to terms with my own introversion, realised for the first time that it was not an undesirable personality trait. I figured I did not have to change if I did not want to, that it was fine to not be the life of every party or steal every show. The pressure to shine and socialise can severely damage an adolescent’s sense of self. I was conflicted, torn, still finding who I was when Sid came along. When everyone else was telling me otherwise, he showed me that it was okay to love, and make choices that may not make sense to others, and that a life of contemplation spent in doing your own thing at your own time was not such a bad way to live after all.