I write so many great fanfics, and they get so few views. So I am reposting! And also, I’m busy today, going to see the local WWII memorial and find Poppie’s name on it.

Jab Tak Hain Jaan: Independence Movement to Sino-Indian War

One (of many) problems with the original JTHJ was the crazed homicidal mania of London cars for Shahrukh Khan. So a simple fix would be to put it during a period when physical danger was an actual everyday event that would make sense. Another problem is Katrina’s strange “bargains” with God. What would make more sense is if she really felt she was committing a sin somehow, that Shahrukh was injured as punishment for her sin, and therefore breaking it off with him would be doing what God wanted. So we can set it in the past and make her a traditional old-fashioned type who sees even just an engagement as a sacrament. Or heck, make her married like the heroine was in the original so it truly would be a sin by anyone’s mark. And all of this becomes easier if we set it in the past.

Starting in 1944. WWII is winding down, Shahrukh was sent by his mother from the Punjab to Bombay in order to escape family pressure to participate in the freedom movement after his older brothers were all arrested and/or killed. In Bombay, Shahrukh leads a bit of a double life, on the one hand being a carefree day worker enjoying the sights and sounds of the big city. On the other hand, having found the local Independence group and doing small tasks for them, delivering messages and so on under the noses of the police because he is just the happy street musician that everyone likes.

(And maybe his disturbing youth make-up would be less disturbing surrounded by period costumes)

Kat is an Anglo-Indian. Her father is a wealthy Indian businessman, her mother a British woman, daughter of a colonial officer. Her father has secret leanings towards Independence, but her beloved grandfather is heartbroken at the idea of being thrown out of the country he thinks of as his home. Her mother is a more for Independence than her father even, a firebrand not afraid to speak her mind. Her mother also fully embraced Hinduism and helped arrange her engagement to a similarly high profile and wealthy young man, from a family that is even more aggressively for Independence than they are. It is a marriage that makes everyone happy based on the compatibility of the couple and the similarity of the families, and also because they see it as uniting two great Indian families, creating a power block that can help to push the British out. Kat’s engagement is, for her, religious AND a promise to her parents AND the one thing she can do to help the Independence movement.

So when she starts running into Shahrukh outside her father’s luxury hotel and asks him to help her learn a Punjabi folk song, and then he takes her to a lowclass party and gets her to loosen up, she resists falling in love with him. She takes him to the Indian Gate and makes him swear with her not to fall in love, swearing to the spirit of India, the one thing they both revere (Shahrukh is a Marxist style atheist, so he makes fun of her belief in God). But then, inevitably, they fall in love after all. There is a protest outside her hotel, the police do a lathi charge, she is caught up in it when trying to make peace between the protesters and the police, Shahrukh drops his guitar and rushes in to save her. And then they are in love.

(This might also make more sense as a gathering of Punjabi workers in Bombay, part political and part social, hiding in abandoned factories so the police won’t break them up as an illegal gathering)

Katrina is conflicted, but Shahrukh is not. While she is worried about her parents and her relationship with God and her duty to her family and to the country, Shahrukh has a strong feeling of everything changing any day, so they should just live for now. Be happy, don’t think about the future because once Independence comes, it will all be different.

And then it all comes to a head with the 1944 Bombay docks disaster. The biggest disaster in Bombay history. Kat and Shahrukh are lazing around at his room in the chawl by the docks when the explosion hits. All is confusion and dusty haze, Katrina hallucinates and has a vision and realizes that this is her punishment, for letting down God, her family, and India. She finds Shahrukh in the confusion, he has no heartbeat, so she asks for forgiveness from God and India, swears that she will dedicate her life to serving her country and the people and never again put temporary happiness ahead of the long term good. And Shahrukh wakes up.

And then we jump forward 18 years (I also want to change the story structure quite a bit so we start in the past and then are thrown into the future with no explanation for what happened). Shahrukh is now in his late 30s, and a responsible army officer. He was a hero in the Sino-Indian war and peppy young reporter Anushka Sharma is desperate to interview him in Delhi where he is staying for a triumphal awards ceremony and so on. She follows him around and nags and nags until finally he gives in, taken by her determination. She can follow him around and write her story.

(I’m picturing a Sharmila Tagore type, wears practical saris and a big bouffant)

So Anushka gets to see Shahrukh’s Delhi life. Sees him partying with his army crew, and visiting his widowed sister-in-law and nieces and nephews and ill brother (sick from time in jail), and he turns introspective and talks about how he is in the army because his family paid a high price to create independent India and he has to do what little he can to keep their legacy moving forward. Anushka reveals a surprising depth as she admits to feeling the same way. She was 10 years old when they got Independence, her older brother and beloved Bhabhi actually did something to make it happen, she just enjoyed the celebration. So now, although she could have stayed home and enjoyed her family’s money, she has chosen to get a job and work in her own way for the betterment of the country.

Anushka teaches Shahrukh to laugh again and they get closer and closer, and she invites him to spend the rest of his leave in Bombay at her family home, they would all love to meet her. And he could help her convince them that she is doing real good honorable work and they should let her keep her Delhi job instead of forcing her to come home and get married. Shahrukh goes back and forth on it, but Anushka is sure he will come. She tells her friends (who are trying to convince her to just give up and get married) that he will come for her, she is sure. And, he does!!!! He shows up at her favorite cafe, which used to be his favorite cafe back when he was young, and surprises her just as she is telling her friends how sure she is. Happy Bombay Song!

Ending with them arriving at her parents home for him to be introduced to the family. Which is when he discovers……KAT IS ANUSHKA’S SISTER-IN-LAW!!!!!! Shahrukh immediately turns bitter and odd. Anushka can’t understand what is happening, Kat is silent and unreactive, it’s all terrible. Finally, Anushka takes Shahrukh aside and demands to know what is happening. He dances around it, but she figures out that the woman he told her about, the one who he was in love with the last time he was in Bombay, is her Bhabhi.

Everyone is now sad, Katrina with her perfectly nice husband and proper life and small children, Anushka with her sad dreams of being with Shahrukh shattered as she realizes he is still in love with Kat, and Shahrukh lost in memories of Kat as he walks through Bombay. Until, after a long night of wandering the city and having visions of the two of them young and in love, he lands up by the Gateway to India again. And he sees that the Indian flag is now flying over it, not the British flag. And it starts him thinking.

(This kind of vision. This is such a cool song, I wish more people had seen it)

He goes back to the house, and Anushka in a mature fashion greets him and accepts it when he asks to speak to Kat alone. He and Kat go walking in the garden, and he gives a big monologue. He still doesn’t believe in God or fate or any of that. But when he saw the Indian flag flying over the Gateway to India, he thought about their vow. He doesn’t think God saved his life because Katrina gave up their love affair, but he does think that they both sacrificed their youth working to build up their country. He woke up from that accident in the hospital with nothing left for him in Bombay, his home blown up and the one person he loved gone. He joined the underground and got serious about the independent movement. After Independence, he was one of the first Indian army officers to get a commission in the new army. And he can see in Katrina’s life here, and what Anushka told him about her family, that she also devoted her life to the country, in her own way. Running charity hospitals and founding charity schools, supporting her husband as he served in public office, and generally being that shining light of future new India that she planned to be. So maybe there was no grand plan, but maybe things worked out for the best after all. If they had gotten married back then, they would have been happy, they would be here now with children and a home of their own and 18 years of happiness. But they sacrificed all of that, for their country, and maybe it was for the best after all. And so it ends not with a shout but a whimper, Shahrukh kisses Kat on the cheek and then walks away from her. But Anushka sees this through the window and misunderstands.

Shahrukh is in his hotel room getting ready to leave to go back to Delhi, when he gets a knock at the door, a messenger delivering an invitation to Anushka’s grand engagement. She gave in and agreed to marry the man her family had picked out for her. Shahrukh holds the engagement card and we don’t know what he is going to do. Meanwhile, Anushka is getting ready for her engagement with all the women of the family fussing over her. Kat is there too, silently in the background. Anushka asks for some time alone with Kat. The other women leave them, and then Anushka asks her how she did it, how she forgot Shahrukh and settled for a sensible marriage with a sensible man. And Kat tells her “it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. It was the right thing to do back then. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you to do now.” Anushka goes out with that in her mind and sees the whole family waiting and the nice young man and at the last minute stands up and says “No. India is independent now, and so are Indian woman. I don’t know if the man I want to marry will have me, but that doesn’t mean I should just marry any man. I’m going to go to work and make this country better and I don’t need to be married to do it.”

Anushka walks out, triumphantly, having made her choice and taken a leap into the unknown. To find Shahrukh standing outside waiting. She asks why he didn’t come inside, and he explains that he tried to convince a woman to love him the way he wanted to be loved, to do what he wanted her to do, and it didn’t work. He is never going to do that again. So he decided to just stand here and wait and see what she decided for herself. But now that she has made that decision, he devoutly hopes she will consider coming with him to Delhi right now and getting married.

The end of the film is seeing Anushka and Shahrukh gleefully having a registrar wedding in Delhi followed by a big happy Punjabi party hosted by his family. And back in Bombay, the telegram arrives at Anushka’s family home, her family is excited, her brother says they should be proud to have a war hero in the family, her grandmother starts planning what jewels to send her, and in the background we see Kat pick up the telegram and smile and sigh and then we flashback to see she was the one who addressed the wedding invitation to Shahrukh and she was the one who put the clipping of Anushka’s first article on the dressing table to remind her of who she was before the wedding.