Imagine being so in love with someone that living without them really does seem difficult, that your entire existence becomes a question mark if they’re not next to you. Imagine finding a love so deep that your entire body reacts to their presence and their absence makes even breathing difficult.
For someone who’s been in love with the way Bollywood has created and instilled the concept of Romance and true love, Laila Majnu was way beyond a romantic movie. It was hope—a hope that a love like that still exists. A love like Qais Bhatt’s, the unrequited, unfathomable emotion where nothing seems to make sense and yet everything seems right.
To find someone whose presence would make your heart race, someone who would make you believe in destiny, someone who would tell you, “Tujhe kya lagta hai, yeh hum kar rahe hai? Humari kahani likhi hui hai ” and just like that, the phrase “all is fair in love” would start to make sense to you.
“जा अब नहीं आता, अब तू ही ढूँढ मुझे”
-Qais Bhatt
I’ve always said Imtiaz Ali’s films have been heavy on me. His characters feel all the things we feel every day: the love, the hurt, the heartbreak, and yet his characters are allowed the space to feel those emotions intensely while we, in the real world, are taught to move on from our pain because life doesn’t stop for a heartbreak (it really doesn’t). We are taught to love in a balanced proportion—not too much, but not too little.
His characters experience the imbalance of life, the unfair nature of this world, yet they have the space to dwell in it, make it out of it, or put an end to it. Most of us would say we have that option too (but do we really?). Can we, in the real world, really decide that a heartbreak is worth dying. Can we decide that one person can be our entire world, to love so deeply that we really go insane if we have to part with them? Can we really just neglect all the other parts of our lives for that one person and surrender our entire selves to that one entity because we believe they’re our soulmates, because they’re who we’re meant to be with.
Imtiaz Ali’s films have us believing that our entire purpose of this life is to find that one person who is our other half and spend the rest of the life with them through all the ups and downs (I really want to believe that, one person for life), but what if in the real world it’s not one person for life, or what if we’ve already met the one person and let them go, Who are we sharing the ups and downs of our life with then?
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Imtiaz Ali’s film universes are more than often at extremes. They are complex. His characters’ emotions and mental states are at extremes, and probably that is why it works so well with the audience. Because don’t we all wish to feel our emotions that deeply, Don’t we all wish to live in love and die with the pain of our heartbreaks? Don’t we all want to believe that a failed love story is the end of the world? But the practicality of this world has led us to believe that it is not, It is not the end of the world until it really is (it’s not over till it’s actually over).
“इंतज़ार… लम्बा इंतज़ार बस थोड़ा और इंतज़ार… सामने खड़ी है फ़िर भी इंतजार… यह इंतज़ार पागल कर देगा मुझे”
-Majnu
I watched Laila Majnu a little while ago and didn’t think much of it then, except for the fact that the film is unrealistic; nobody today feels that way, and yet you can’t call it wrong. However, as it released once again today, after being demanded by the majority of its viewers, I realised that the film is one of a kind and has successfully grown on me. I have come to realise that there is no right or wrong in the entire movie plotline. Even though it’s been some time since I last watched it, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the beautiful nuances that it has.
The entire movie is like a dream, a dream that most of us have—to find someone who’ll be just as insanely in love with us as Majnu, who would faint when they see us again after months or years of separation, someone who would wait, wait, and wait for us. All of us dream of finding someone whose entire being has our name engraved, whose soul belongs to us (not like selling it to Satan), who would see their god in us, and who would renounce the world to be in our presence.
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Laila Majnu is made in the best way possible. There couldn’t be another way to portray an entire love story so intensely, with the modernity of the day. This film is not the story of Laila Majnu but the story of Laila and Qais Bhatt. The transformation of Qais from a regular lover to a person who is insanely and madly in love with his lady has had him turned into the Majnu of this day and has given hopes to so many out there that the right person for everyone is still out there who is willing to cross oceans, wait for an eternity and who might go absolutely insane if they have to live in the absence of their love.
There is a beauty in the making of Laila Majnu, there is a uniqueness in understanding the timeline of the characters, there is a complexity in understanding that Qais Bhatt and Majnu are two different people but one person moulded by life and their circumstances, there is also a complexity in choosing the name of the characters, especially Laila.
Laila
La illa (the god)
“मेरी सॉसों में…. मुझ में… तुझ में… हर जगह… बस एक ही नाम… ला इल्ला
ला इल्ला इला अल्लाह”
(There is none worthy of worship except Allah)
-Majnu
