Like Yash Chopra's 2004 seminal cross-border romance, Shah Rukh Khan and Taapsee Pannu in Dunki are lovers divided by borders, but never captivated by them.
One of our earliest memories of Shah Rukh Khan as an old man with grey hair is from Yash Chopra's seminal 2005 cross-border romance, Veer-Zaara. He played an Indian Air Force pilot in his 50s, who's grown old held captive in a Pakistani jail for 22 years. Eighteen years after that movie, when Shah Rukh is actually elder than his Veer-Zaara character at 58, he's had a year where he's played a fit, desirable senior citizen in two films – Atlee's Jawan and Rajkumar Hirani's Dunki.
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Love divided by borders
(Spoiler alert)
But that's not where the similarities end. The love stories of Veer-Zaara and Dunki have similar graphs. Two youngsters fall in love in India when the man rescues the woman. He swears to shield her at all costs and makes her mission of a physically and mentally daunting journey home his own. But when he migrates to a new country, the laws of the land take him to a crossroads where he has to choose between the love for her and the love for his country.
That's where the similarities begin to fall apart. His choice is different, and so is her reaction. They carry on their respective paths in their choice of the country. Their fondness for each other lasts over two decades years, even though they've lost touch and have assumed each of them is settled with their spouse in their respective land. They eventually cross paths, return together to their homeland, only to realise they've remained single all these years, waiting for each other.
Where's the love?
They say it's the choices that make or break you. That's also the case with movies. When Veer is blackmailed by Zaara's fiance Raza (Manoj Bajpayee) to either jeopardise her marriage or falsely confess he's an Indian spy in Pakistan, he chooses to protect his love. He ends up in prison for 22 years, before a young lawyer Saamiya Siddiqui (Rani Mukerji) comes to his rescue. He continues to protect Zaara and asks his lawyer to not involve her in the case.
However, unlike Veer, Hardy (Shah Rukh) in Dunki plays the soldier card and chooses his country instead. Stranded with his love Mannu (Taapsee Pannu) as illegal immigrants in the UK, he's given the choice to opt for asylum in the country by falsely confessing that he's under threat in India. But the patriot in Hardy takes over the lover in him and as a result, he's deported back to India, separated from Mannu, who stays back in the UK.
Similarly, upon being tricked into believing that Veer dies in a bus accident on his way back to India, Zaara loses it and breaks her engagement, even though that leads to her father's (Boman Irani) death via cardiac arrest. She then relocates to India and looks after Veer's ancestral village in Punjab. She can no longer marry Veer in her head, but makes sure to fulfil her duties had she been his widow.
But again in Dunki, Mannu chooses to seek asylum in full knowledge of the fact that she'll get separated from Hardy. She consciously chooses to not go back to the country she's born in, where she met Hardy, but where she doesn't see a future. She chooses her British dreams over her Indian reality. Years later, we see her dying due to a tumour in a London hospital, but she desperately wishes to return to her homeland – not for Hardy, but because she wants to see her homeland before dying.
In both cases, they are star-crossed lovers. Man-made factors like nationality, immigration laws, and cross-border hostility come in the way of their boundless romance. But the difference lies in the fact that in one case, they chose to go separate ways and in the other, they stood by each other even in the face of death, familial loss, treason, and captivity. As a result, Veer and Zaara make a long-awaited return to India together as a married couple.
But in Dunki, Mannu dies as soon as Hardy proposes to her. Is that Rajkumar Hirani's way of punishing her because she didn't choose love when given a chance? One would've believed so, had the same penalty been awarded to Hardy. He didn't choose love either, for the sake of loyalty to his country. But rewarding him for patriotism in a movie that insists on love and humanity across borders is rather self-defeating. Sacrificing your love for your country is passé. Try making another country your own to honour your love, maybe.
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2023-12-22 10:23:38Z
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