I’m back!  After a couple of breaks for Ghayal and Saala Khadoos.  Just like if I can’t decide what to watch, I can always enjoy throwing in DDLJ, I can always toss in another part of this many many part series whenever there is nothing else going on (look for another break in a few days when I have to stop and cover Fitoor).

(part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here, part 6 here, part 7 here, part 8 here, part 9 here, part 10 here, part 11 here, part 12 here, part 13 here, part 14 here, part 15 here, part 16 here)

I left off with Shahrukh and Kajol’s first meeting.  Well, really the first time they saw each other.  He has pulled her into the train, but they haven’t actually spoken yet.  And their first sight of each other comes off very differently than their actual first interaction.

I love the way Adi set us up for this, by the way.  We are already somewhat charmed and interested in both characters.  And we have been watching them both plan this trip, so we know they are going to meet eventually.  And, you know, it’s a love story.  So we know they will fall in love and we want to see that!  But we also want to see Kajol cut him down a few pegs, and Shahrukh get her to loosen up, because we have also seen how they are both flawed.  Wait, scratch that, Raj Malhotra and Simran Singh have no flaws.  How they both APPEAR to be flawed.  Although we will find out that at heart, they are perfect.

And we get both the love and the conflict split into two scenes!  The initial eyes meeting swoony moment of magic is immediately followed by an actual conversation in which they realize that they HATE each other.

And now I am going to talk about eve-teasing and sexual harassment as part of India’s public narrative.  Fun!  There are essentially two ways of looking at male-female interactions outside of the home and Shahrukh and Kajol’s characters here represent the opposing ones.  Once Shahrukh crosses the invisible line, that is.

At first, they maintain what could be considered a “proper” distance.  Kajol’s suitcase has fallen open, she is focused on getting her clothes back in and closing it.  Shahrukh is fiddling with the door to the main compartment, trying to open it.  Being a chatterbox, he is making a couple of lame jokes while he does it, “do you have a key for this?  Open Sesame!”  Kajol gives that close-mouthed no eye contact smile that you use when someone is being pleasant and you just don’t feel like talking with them.

(this smile.  No idea what question was just asked at this press conference, but she does not find it amusing)

And then she sits down, puts on her glasses, and starts to read.  This is the clearest sign a woman can give that she does not want to talk.  Notice, at first, Shahrukh settles down to be quiet.  But then he notices he is sitting on something, and it is her bra.  He smiles, like “what a fun joke for us to share!” and sort of goofily taps her shoulder and holds it out.  She takes it and glares at him, he makes a face like he is pretending to be embarrassed but isn’t really and settles down again while she goes back to her book.  He starts drumming and humming out of boredom.  She looks at him again, a quelling look.  And it is only then that he reaches into his jacket and pulls out his sunglasses and prepares to try a line on her.

So, let’s look at this initial interaction from their conflicting perspectives and see how it plays out.  Kajol first.  For her, here is a nice guy, he helped her onto the train.  She will smile at his jokes, but once she sits down and starts reading, she thinks she has put out a clear signal that she is not to be bothered and anything further would be harassment/eve-teasing.  And then he taps her shoulder and holds out her bra while he makes a funny face.  Clearly, he is taking too much enjoyment in a somewhat sexual contact, and needs to be reprimanded, reminded that she is a respectable woman and it would be wrong therefore to interact in any way while they are alone together.  So she frowns at him.  But then he keeps humming and drumming, so she frowns at him again, not to stop harassment but to stop noise while she is reading (okay, he is singing “hum-tum, ek kamre…” so it is a little bit flirty, but not that much).  From Kajol’s perspective, they had an appropriate initial interaction, and then she tried to shut him down three times and he refused to leave her alone.

(Maybe if Shahrukh had been wearing an awesome scarf…)

But let’s look at this from Shahrukh’s side of things.  Here is a pretty girl that smiled at him and took his hand when he helped her on the train.  Enough of an interaction that maybe he takes a shot and makes a couple of jokes while trying to open the door to see if she laughs at them.  So, she doesn’t really smile, he decides to leave her alone more or less, although he does sit on her side of the compartment, so he is still open to an interaction.  And then he finds her bra.  What a funny joke!  He should tap her shoulder and make a funny face so they can laugh about it together!  And she glares at him again.  So, okay, he gets the message, he starts looking around, tapping his fingers, entertaining himself.  And then she makes a big show of turning all the way around and really really glaring at him.  And that’s when he gets out the sunglasses.  Because she has now initiated contact.

I’m not saying Shahrukh isn’t irritating through out this whole scene, and definitely a little out of line.  But on the other hand, Kajol is reading his very harmless interactions, right from the start, as some sort of horrible ill-bred attack.  Let the man hum while you read your book!  Let him smile when he finds a bra that fell out of your suitcase!  It doesn’t mean he is about to attack you.

And then he has the glasses on and he is pulling out his lines.  First, “Robbie ki party?” She says she doesn’t go to parties, and he backs off and looks side to side for a second, then he comes back “Your eyes, they remind me of someone.”  “Who?” (she’s really snapping out her words now) “My grandmother” (now she is visibly rolling her eyes) “Please, just leave me alone” “of course of course!”.  He backs off again and looks side to side again, then crawls back to seriously invade her space and look up at her book.  She really shrieks with anger now “What are you doing?!?”  He says “I was just wondering, how do you read upside down?” As she is yelling at him and shoving him off her lap, the door opens, and there is slutty Tina!  Shahrukh makes eye contact with her, gets a big smile and body language shift in response, immediately zips off Kajol and over to her.

So, again, let’s look at it this interaction from the conflicting perspectives of Kajol and Shahrukh.  Kajol’s is pretty simple.  She goes from thinking he is mildly irritating and ill-bred, to actually hating him, lumping him in mentally as an improper dangerous man.

Shahrukh, on the other hand, is actually a little more complex.  He starts off with the “Robbie ki party?” in response to her glare that looked like it might be an opening.  When she shuts it done, he backs off and looks side to side, not like he is trying to come up with another idea, but like he is trying to find anything else to amuse himself for the next few minutes.  And there isn’t anything, so he decides to keep teasing the girl, because he wants the angry reaction. And that final dive at the book, that isn’t even flirting, that is making fun of her for being so angry and overreacting that she is pretending to read in the most obvious way possible. We even see, at the end, he has his head in her lap,with no sense that he is getting any physical enjoyment from the interaction.  And then, most tellingly, as soon as anyone else is in the room to amuse him, he immediately leaves her alone and goes after the more promising prospect.

So, that’s their perspective as individual people, but they are also representing two major sides of the eve-teasing and general harassment discussions in India.  From the Kajol-side, any interaction between a young man and a young woman not sanctioned by their families runs the risk of turning into rape.  The solution is for women to shut down any level of interaction immediately, never give in, even if they want to have a pleasant conversation with a stranger, it is too dangerous!  It can’t be risked!  You give these boys an inch, they will take a mile!  Putting on sunglasses and asking if he has “seen you somewhere before” is a firm indicator that this man is completely untrustworthy.  This is the kind of thinking that leads both to purdah, to insisting on no pre-marital contact of any kind even after the engagement.  And, of course, to blaming the girls who do have bad experiences because clearly they failed to shut down the interaction at the very very initial stage.  I’m not saying that Kajol thinks Shahrukh is going to rape her immediately if she so much as smiles at him, but maybe she thinks that if she is ever friendly to any boy, it will lead him to think they can go on dates, and dates will lead to pre-marital sex, and that would be the end of everything.

In contrast, let’s look at Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania, the terribly named DDLJ re-invention that came out a year or so ago.  In that one, our heroine (played by Alia Bhatt) is much more confident and experienced that Kajol.  She is also planning to have an arranged marriage and is committed to being faithful to her future husband.  But, when she finds out that her friend who is also having an arranged marriage was tricked and seduced by a boy, she understands and is sympathetic, because these things can happen, and it isn’t the girl’s fault.  More importantly, when she meets the hero, “Humpty” (Gah!  That name!), she immediately identifies him as “safe”.  She has no worries about his harmless flirting, getting drunk alone with him and his friends, or any of that.  She knows the difference between a nice simple boy with a healthy sexual appetite and an actual threat, and that in fact, the first kind of boy would be happy to be used as a defense and protection against the other.

Humpty Sharma really supports the Shahrukh-side of the debate, which has gotten more and more popular, at least on film, in the years since DDLJ.  That argument would be that it is this very enforced separation between the sexes that is so dangerous.  If they were allowed to talk, to flirt, to get to know each other as people, then everyone could enter into relationships as equals.  Moreover, and this is a problem worldwide, not just in India, all of these protections are aimed at stranger rapes, when in fact you are in much more danger in your own home.  Actually, film has been hitting that lesson for decades!  Remember Phool Aur Patthar?  When Meena Kumari is a widow abused by her in-laws and treated with respect and caring by the robber (Dharmendra) who breaks into her house?

(See!  Even the poster assumes that the stranger will be the danger!  Also, first Indian film to use insert some high quality beefcake, thank you Dharmendra!)

It’s like, you know stranger-danger?  The lessons we’ve been teaching to all our children/young women worldwide for years?  So, the most recent research shows that this is a TERRIBLE IDEA.  At least, in the way it is currently taught.  First, children, and everyone really, are statistically in much more danger from those they know than strangers.  In the broadest possible example, if a child is being abused at home, it is better for them to go up to literally anybody on the street and say “I need help, I am being hurt at home,” than to avoid any strangers and assume that their abusive parent is the best option.  In fact, it is a tactic abusers use, to try to convince their victims that no one will help them, that everything outside is even worse than what is at home.  And stranger-danger just serves to enforce that lesson.

What is suggested now, instead, is to look at actions instead of people.  Whether they are strangers or not, if someone does this thing or that thing, they are dangerous and you should tell someone about it.  This is the lesson Kajol needs to learn.  That just because Shahrukh is a stranger and talking to her, it doesn’t mean he is automatically dangerous.  More important is that she is feeling anger, not fear or disgust.  That he is talking to her, not trying to touch her.  That he gave her bra back with a smile and a laugh, didn’t keep it or try to make it the interaction sexual.  Compare that with Ranjit, the not-stranger, the one her family approves of.  He makes everything either sexual or violent and it disgusts her instinctively.  That is the danger to watch out for, not some random young man who is trying to talk to you.

And then Tina arrives, and he completely loses interest.  Which is insulting to Kajol, but another sign that she is completely miss-interpreting Shahrukh.  If he were really an icky guy, whether the woman flirted back or not wouldn’t have made a difference.  But, see!  He’s not obsessed with Kajol!  Or getting off on harassing uninterested women!  He is just a hormonal young man who will flirt with any young woman who enters his field of vision.

Wow, I have spent a lot of time on this one scene!  But I think it is important, because their attitudes here carry through the whole next hour, all the way up to the “Main Hoon Hindustani” line.  The main point of that line is, as Anupama Chopra and basically every analysis ever discusses, to re-define the Indian identity as something essential to a personality, rather than defined by birth and upbringing within India.  But the other point, is to say to Kajol “You have been interpreting everything I have done this entire movie as a threat, but in fact I am just a nice guy who talks a lot and sometimes makes lame jokes, you paranoid overly protected idiot!  I obviously would never have gone this far with jokes if I thought you were ever taking them seriously!”  The parallel to that scene would be when Kajol matter of factly tells him that she is engaged and will shortly marry a man she has never met, which tells him “You have been thinking I am just a irritating prim little shrew, but I actually really do believe in these old fashioned values and never planned or expected to interact with any male besides my arranged husband!  Suck on that!”

But they are very far from that at this moment, after their first meeting, with Shahrukh writing her off as a rude and mean girl who enjoys overreacting to his obviously harmless advances, and Kajol writing him off as a potentially dangerous and definitely ungentlemanly guy she will be avoiding.