This is mostly for my own satisfaction. I liked the love story so much, and dislike so much that surrounded it, I just want to lay out how the movie could work if it was JUST love story and no comic relief.

At heart, this is a really lovely heartbreaking story. A man and woman who fall in love through their efforts to journey to another country. And then they finally get there, and one wants to stay and the other wants to leave. Will their love for each other be enough to survive this basic conflict?

If it was that movie, I would love it and watch it again and again. But it wouldn’t make much money because there’s no comedy and whackiness and blah blah, stuff Margaret Doesn’t Like. So instead we have this movie, which has a lovely heartbreaking love story, and also a bunch of stuff around the edges that Margaret Doesn’t Like.

Anyway, the Margaret Version!

We start in present day with Taapsee sneaking out of a British hospital. But then instead of going to a super fancy office and having a funny conversation, she sneaks back to the desi neighborhood where she lives, we see her little two room apartment with her little collection of things, she packs up a little bag with the few things she wants, and then goes to the tiny travel agency run by a desi down the block and tells him she wants a ticket to Bangladesh, she wants to try to get home. He calls her “aunty” and tries to convince her to stay, we get a vision of this tight NRI community where South Asians of every nationality live together and support each other in their exile. It’s not wacky, it’s just lightly bittersweetly comic.

And then we have Taapsee calling SRK, him stopping in the middle of a footrace to joyfully take the call and her saying she is in trouble and needs him to meet her in Bangladesh (not Dubai, makes more sense to have her going to a contiguous location). And as Taapsee boards her tiny crowded flight, her airplane fades to be one of those concrete airplanes on roofs in the village and a flashback starts.

I love almost everything about how the Taapsee-SRK relationship develops, I just wish there was better stuff around it! I would still want to see Taapsee meeting with a broker who tells her if she learns a little wrestling, she may be able to get an athletics Visa. And then Soldier on leave SRK meets her at her job where she adorably reacts to him beating up her boss not with fear, or gratitude, but pushy demands that he teach her wrestling!

There’s a great line in the film when Taapsee defends SRK in their English class, saying he was nice and never laughed when he taught her to wrestle, so no one should laugh at them trying to learn English. But we didn’t get to see that! At least, not enough. I want SRK to start by saying no, he is only killing time waiting for his next train, and then Taapsee’s family show up at her job asking for help because the landlord is throwing them out again. I want to see Taapsee’s family begging for just one more week in their home, and the landlord explaining that he is also stuck, no one has enough money and every family is struggling and stagnant in this village. And I want Taapsee’s family to be a widowed mother and younger siblings. And I want an explicit line of dialogue about how Taapsee is the “son” of the family and will protect them and care for them all, just see if she doesn’t! This opens the eyes of out of towner SRK to just how desperate it is to get out of the village, find a new source of income, a new option, for people trapped in a cycle of poverty. And THEN he agrees to be her wrestling coach, and doesn’t laugh at her, and is nice to her, and treats her as kind of a younger brother type. Another thing the movie didn’t fully explore, Taapsee is very mannish in her attitudes and clearly SRK is the first person to see her as a lovely romantic woman, I want to look a little more at how he goes from “sure, I’ll be your friend and help you” to “I’m in love with you”.

When the wrestling Visa doesn’t work out, I want SRK to take responsibility just for Taapsee (no need for the other friends) and offer to pay for her English classes. By now he is committed to this quest of hers. And I want them to get drunk, just the two of them, and he tells her about his failed engagement. How his fiancee eloped and broke his heart, and everyone in his home town laughs at him. He wants to send her to England to prove to himself that he is just as good as any NRI, and restore his self-respect. And then there is the moment she defends him in class, calling out his humanity and kindness and all the things he thought of as faults (because they were why he was left at the alter), and he falls in love.

I want to keep the funny bit where they all memorize one line of dialogue for the English exam, and all the failures that follow. But I want that to be the most we see of the other people in the class, no need to try to throw in a million stories, Taapsee’s is stronger on its own I think. And then the results post, and Taapsee fails. And I want her to try to kill herself after that because she can’t face going home and telling her mother she failed. This is what inspires SRK, and he swears he will get her, and anyone else who will risk it with them, to England. And then the Dunki route sequence happens, no alterations, some of their companions die along the way, SRK saves Taapsee from death and they finally embrace and admit their love, after alllllllllllllll of this they get to England. And find the desi neighborhood where everyone lives on top of each other and struggles just like in the village. Shahrukh wants to go home right away. This isn’t the magical perfect England of their dreams. But Taapsee is determined to stay, says they can work and make it better. And he stays for her. We can even have it explicit, their contact from the village shows them a crowded room with mattresses on the floor and says he might have a small single room with an attached bath opening soon. Shahrukh wants to go home because sharing a room with 5 strangers is worse than they had it in India. Taapsee wants to stay because “soon” they will have a better room. Is it worth staying for the hope? It is for her, it isn’t for him.

This is the bit where I feel like the original movie mixes a lot of stuff together without making it clear. We go from high comedy of a white dress and all fake Visa wedding, to high drama of a courtroom speech without a second to breath. And we see Taapsee working a job as a cleaner, and then later begging. If nothing else, this section doesn’t do ENOUGH work to show why Taapsee would still choose to stay. What I would like to see is Taapsee, even slightly, making progress. She’s working nights as a cleaner, but going to a free ESL class during the day. She doesn’t mind their tiny one room, because it is their one room and she is paying the rent and no one is throwing them out. And most of all, I want to see her getting phone calls from home and knowing that the money she is sending is going a long way for her family. And I want a lot of fights with her and SRK really investigating what this life means for her versus him. He has no family to support back in India, he is having a harder time finding work than she is, and a harder time learning English, he finds himself with a group of other desi young men who spend all day sitting on street corners talking about how there are no jobs and no respect for them here. He wants to go back to India, go back to the army, support her and her family on his pay. She wants to stay, the money he could make on army pay isn’t as much as she is making here as a cleaner, they have their own room, they have their own life, she is learning English.

And then it can all come to a head simply. No need for a big speech about how SRK refuses to bad mouth India and claim asylum, or a big wedding fight scene.. Instead they and their neighbors are rounded up in an early morning raid, arrested, and given the option of claiming asylum or being deported. And SRK chooses to be deported and Taapsee chooses asylum. And neither knows what the other picked until they get on their respected transports and see the other is not there. THAT’s heartbreak!!!

The other thing I don’t like about this movie is the implausibility of them not talking for 25 years. I mean, why? Phone cards exist, and later skype and zoom and all kinds of things that are even better. Plus, he’s living in her hometown, isn’t she talking to her family? Wouldn’t she get news of him that way?

To me, it’s just as sad to show them in constant communication, sharing a life across a phone line for 25 years, as it is to show them not talking. And that’s a story that deserves to be told, the story of so many migrant workers and their families. I want to see SRK walk into her family home back in India because he knew the fastest way to get in touch with her would be through her family. I want to see Taapsee laughing and crying when she hears his voice again, and then joking about how they can practice English by talking together. And then 25 years of him listening on the phone while she graduates from her English program, her listening to him brag as he shows his medals from a footrace, and both of them accepting that they would rather share a life together separately, than share a life with anyone else together.

Now, I have two options for how my version could end. The super sad one, and the happy one.

In the sad version, Taapsee makes it to Bangladesh but collapses at the airport. She is taken to a hospital and sinks into a coma. Shahrukh is on the way and calls her only to have a nurse answer. He travels as fast as he can, anxious on the flight, running from the airport, hurrying a cab to the hospital, only to arrive and learn she died 20 minutes ago. He asks and is given permission to sit with the body, goes into her room and holds her hand and slips the engagement ring on that he has been holding for her all these years. And finds a torn photo of him under her pillow, and matches it with the other half, the torn photo of her he has been carrying all these years. The film ends with him saying they were always fated to be divided by borders, and now the final border separates them, death from life. TEARS!

The alternative happy version is that they reunite, finally, at the airport where she has been sleeping all night waiting for his plane to arrive. She promises to tell him why she is finally returning home once they are on Indian soil. He cheekily proposes, but calls her by the wrong name. She pretends to be offended, and then he explains that he has a fake passport for her, they will marry in Bangladesh under the fake name, and she will return with him to India as his wife. She complains that she won’t really feel married under someone else’s name, he promises they will marry again in India for real. They have the fake wedding ceremony, which is funny and touching at the same time, and then she wears a Burka to get on the flight and SRK fast talks his way through explaining why she is so much taller and so on than the passport says she is, “Marriage changes a woman”. They hold hands on the plane ride and flashback to their earlier journey out of India that was so much harder and longer. And then, finally, they land in India and a nice flight attendant wakes them up because this adorable older couple fell asleep under the same blanket. They get off the plane and Taapsee keeps refusing to say why she wanted to come back until he brings her to a park where she can take her shoes off and really feel the earth of India. At which point she tells him the truth, that she is dying. It always seemed like there would be time later to come home, but now there is no time left. SRK walks away to cry, and a passerby asks Taapsee if her husband is all right, and she says “he is a soldier. he can’t cry in front of me”. And then SRK comes back, wiping his eyes, all cheerful, and says “So, when can we be married?”

They tease each other and laugh about the wedding, she playfully puts him off because she wants her family there, they travel together back to the village alternating happy to be together and sad that it will not last. In the village, he proudly takes her to her family home. It’s not just a home, it’s a village center. Her mother runs a handicrafts collective, one sister teaches basic reading and writing, another holds a lending library, and the third runs a medical clinic. They were inspired by her letters, the ESL classes she went to, the librarians who helped her, the health clinic. If the community abroad can do all that for its people, why should it be any less in the village? And then Taapsee breaks the news to her family that she is dying. Everyone is very sad, but her mother wipes her tears and insists that the wedding happen as soon as possible, she has been waiting to make SRK her son-in-law for 25 years and will not wait one more minute. Happy village wedding song! Dance, joy, everything! And at the end of it, Taapsee collapses. Her doctor sister rushes to help her and brings her to the clinic. And then with SRK’s help, figures out how to reach her doctor in London and get more details on her condition. Taapsee wakes up to find all her family and SRK crying around her bed. She is afraid because it is the first time SRK has cried in front of her. And then he takes her hand and explains, it was a misdiagnosis. Her sister looked at the labs from London, and then did her own testing, and what seemed like cancer was actually anemia, she just needs to stop working and take B12 shots for the rest of her life. It won’t be easy, and she will always be weak, but she won’t die tomorrow, or the next day, or the next month, or any time after that.

Happy ending montage showing SRK and Taapsee’s home together which is filled with joint photos of the past 25 years, her at Big Ben seemingly holding hands with SRK at the Golden Temple, her eating lunch in a mall food court seemingly at the same table as SRK at a Dhaba, and so on. And then finally a photo of the two of them in a wrestling pit in the village, actually together.