PART TWO

In this part, I'd like to talk about the two heroes in each of the three films. All three films that I'm attempting to interpret in this blog can be clearly divided into two halves and each of the two heroes has a part to play in one of the halves. I will also try and elaborate in what I've mentioned earlier about the two heroes being "essences" rather than characters in the films.

THE BOY
By the boy, I'm referring to the heroine's love interest before she gets married, namely, Naren (Vikram) in Swami, Prem in WSD and Sameer (Salman Khan) in Hum Dil... .

Now, I'm not sure if these films have had a conscious influence over each other, but its quite surprising how similar they are in the characterisation of the two heroes, as we will see. In Swami, Naren is a city-educated boy, well-read like the heroine and belonging to a well to do family. In terms of their profession, WSD and Hum Dil... are more similar to each other. Both Prem and Sameer are musicians, and their decision to come to the heroine's home has something to do with their music. Prem comes to Bombay to become a music director in films and Sameer comes to learn music from Nandini's father, who is supposed to be a world-famous singer.
The films seem to suggest that even though all three men are quite likable in terms of their personality - all three are friendly, funny and talkative - there is still something unmarriable about them. The film also tells us that this is because family or social restrictions. But there are also other indications within the film which tell us that the "girl" is not going to choose the "boy", even though he is a first love.

All three men are outsiders, in a sense, who originally do not belong to our heroine's world, but have arrived in it. Naren is from the city, Prem from "north India" and Sameer is from "Italy". Even though there is an attempt at assimilation and their two separate worlds do collide, they do not become one. This "alien-ness" of these boys, which never really comes to the fore as an obvious reason, still seems to suggest that the girl cannot mary such a man.

Another reason - again something that the film does not obviously state - is the profession of the men. It is never clearly mentioned what Naren does for a living, but there is a suggestion that he comes from a rich family, which could be involved in business. Both Prem and Sameer are the artist types. In itself, there is no problem with these professions, but if they are set against the profession of the second hero, then they do pose a problem. Shyam (Girish Karnad) in Swami has a regular job as we see him go out to work everyday, Anand (Naseeruddin Shah) in WSD is a doctor and Vanraj (Ajay Devgan) is a lawyer in Hum Dil... .

From a conventional marriage point of view, these professions are far more viable than the unreliable artist type. There is a total lack of imagination even in the conventional-ness of these professions - you cannot get safer than doctor and lawyer!

Therefore, coming back to the essence than these men represent - it is unstability. So if one examines the film in retrospect, the film already seems to say that "love is not all you need".

THE HUSBAND
What struck me most about the husband's role in all three films is the strong "art house" appeal of the heroes that have been chosen to play these roles. Of course, these days Ajay Devgan is quite happy romping around in "a-joke-a-minute" comedies, but at the time Hum Dil... was made, he was considered a serious actor, in films like Zakhm and The Legend of Bhagat Singh.

Then there is their personality that also strikes us - Shyam, Anand and Vanraj are calm and display a quiet maturity that is missing in Naren, Prem and Sameer.

All three are able to gauge that the girl is not very happy with the marriage, and ask their heroines to confide in them as friends. And here we have another contrast - where in the first half we have a love that is "romantic" and based largely on physical attraction, in the second half the film advocates a love that is far more tempered and is based on friendship. This is the kind of love that we do not see very often in popular Hindi cinema and it is what sets these three films apart for me.

The essence represented by the husband is therefore stability in terms of marriage. In fact in Swami, we do have a scene in which Mini's dying uncle tells her that Naren would be the best choice where marriage is concerned: "Naren pyaar kar sakta hai, lekin use nibha nahi sakta." Nandini reiterates this same thought in Hum Dil... when she tells Sameer: "Pyaar karna maine tumse sikha, lekin pyaar nibhana mujhe unhone (Vanraj) sikhaya".
It is this distinction that these two films make between "karna" and "nibhana" that is interesting. Both seem to say that the two cannot be found in the same person. WSD has other issues, which I will deal with in the next section of this blog.