Breakups in the new-gen Bollywood; Celebration of freedom or suppression of pain?

In 2009, ‘Love Aaj Kal’ created a new trend with the song ‘Chor Bazaari’, and made breaking up and still staying friends cool. Not many picked up on the trend, and the trail was left cold. Even then, we quite liked the peppy number and the friendship brewing up between the two characters that were happy in their respective lives and wanted each other’s friendship, if not love.

Cut to 2016, we have ‘The Breakup Song’, featured on Ayan aka Ranbir Kapoor and Alizeh aka Anushka Sharma, who are singing away to the pros of breaking up with someone you were once in love with. Just few days later, we have Alia Bhatt’s ‘Dear Zindagi’ where we see her character in pain after breakup, but then, to deal with it, there is a hyperfast song ‘Let’s Break Up’ which again speaks of mutual breakup, contrary to the teary ones we have seen in past.

And the latest to join the bandwagon is ‘Je T’aime (I Love You)’, from the movie ‘Befikre’, which has the two protagonists singing away the cons of being in love. Though the ring of it is quite similar to ‘Jaane Kyun’ from ‘Dil Chahta Hai’, but the difference between the two songs is that in the DCH song one character was so in love with the idea of love, while the other repelled it.

That got us thinking, has Bollywood gone into the anti-love mode, away from the mushy and lush green romanticised love ballads, and teary and symbolic winter mode of separation?

Well, maybe yes. The pain is there, but suppressed behind the practical concepts and lifestyle of today’s generation. This can be seen beautifully charted out in ‘Dear Zindagi’. We repress from expressing, and maybe that is why, the current genre of romance too is becoming more on the practical side, hiding the pain beneath the surface of being cool.

Is the idea of painless separation cool? Well, yes, anything that does not give you tears is good enough, unless it is done to repress the actual emotion.

No matter what, we miss the old, a bit dramatized version of love and its pangs, the whole package that comes along.

Kadambari Srivastava

Grammar Nazi, word weaver, dreamer, bibliophile, technophile, caffeine addict, foodie, shuttling shopaholic! Mash it in a Bollywood recipe and voila! Pushpa, you’ve got her!