Let’s Talk About Women | Dil To Pagal Hai gave unrequited love the graciousness and dignity it deserves

There are countless Hindi films on unrequited love, each showing a different shade of heartache. There’s Saajan, Darr, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Cocktail, New York, and several others, but none has been able to accord the anguish the graciousness and the dignity that it deserves as Dil To Pagal Hai does. It is essentially why, today, after 25 years of the film’s release, you may find Pooja’s idealistic ideas of love naïve and dated, but Nisha still stands as tall, resolute, and peerless. I remember watching the Yash Chopra directorial as a pre-teen and being smitten. Not with Madhuri Dixit ’s Pooja or even Shah Rukh Khan ’s Rahul. But with Karisma Kapoor ’s Nisha. She was strikingly gorgeous, confident, independent, and terrific at what she did. She spoke her mind, tried to do the right thing even when it did not come easy, and was acutely self-aware, a rare trait in Hindi film characters. As a young girl, I did not understand these attributes entirely but I understood one thing. I wanted to be like Nisha when I grew up. That was the goal; getting the boy was incidental.

It’s been 25 years and Kapoor has long retired but Nisha still continues to be my favourite performance of hers in a prolific filmography that includes movies such as Raja Hindustani , Zubeidaa , and Fiza . Of course, her stunning clothes and incredible dancing have a lot to do with it, but it is majorly because of the way Nisha has been written and the magic that Kapoor weaves with what she is given that makes her such a timeless favourite. Though all of her is stand-out fantastic in Dil To Pagal Hai, two of her scenes from the film particularly stand out. One, when consumed by guilt at misbehaving with Pooja during the Dance of Envy, she suddenly decides to visit her parents in London and is packing for it. Rahul asks her to not go. In response, she does the most courageous thing a person in love can do, and with such honesty and vulnerability, it tugs at your heart. This one scene goes from vulnerable to sad to light to amicable all in three minutes. It is a precious cinematic moment and definitely one of my most treasured. The second is when upon her return from London, Nisha finds out that Rahul is deeply in love but not with her. Devastated, she is sitting by a lake throwing pebbles into nothingness. One more time, she bares her heart out—confesses to feeling hurt, jealous, and envious of Pooja for evoking love in Rahul within weeks, something she couldn’t do in years—and hating herself for feeling these emotions that she thinks she shouldn’t. Heightened and dramatic, it is the moment that every unrequited love story deserves but only a rare few get. The Betty-Veronica template is quite the norm in love triangles. Pooja is the quintessential Betty and you will find various versions of her in several popular films but there is no Veronica like Nisha. Pooja’s character, much like her clothes and fetishization of romance, is one-note and predictable. Nisha’s arc, meanwhile, is challenging, a lot more life-like, and comes a full circle. The film’s writers Yash Chopra, Pamela Chopra (his wife), and Tanuja Chandra imbue her with an innate humanness that instantly relates and connects. They could have easily boxed her as the other woman but they chose to show her as the unfaltering best friend instead, who chooses to stay and support despite it all. Nisha does not just empathize with Rahul when Ajay ( Akshay Kumar like you’ve never seen him) returns to marry Pooja but she also plays her part in ensuring that our lead pair end up together and get the happily ever after they’d been wishing for. Too good to be true, you may think. But that’s what. Kapoor’s disarming performance makes every bit of it believable. In fact, she manages to achieve something even bigger and better. She makes Nisha aspirational. After Chandni and Lamhe, Dil To Pagal Hai was Yash Chopra’s another attempt at creating a love song, lyrical as poetry, pristine as nature. Though a bit hep and trendy considering it captures the new India of post-1991 economic reforms, it’s just as beautiful, memorable, and haunting. Another remarkable quality that stands out about this film is how it presented a case for consent long before it became a part of our vocabulary. If you haven’t watched Dil To Pagal Hai yet or if you want to re-watch it (which you totally must), it is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video. When not reading books or watching films, Sneha Bengani writes about them. She tweets at @benganiwrites. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and