Sunday, June 22, 2008

Bollywoods bitter love story

Do people beyond a certain age have the right to get married?

That’s a fairly valid question and it emerges from the creases of comedy in Mere Baap Pehle Aap. In the film the son arranges for his aging father to marry the woman he loved and lost.
Two years ago Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia, known in real life to have share more than a passing fondness, played aging single parents who find love. The film Pyar Mein Twist bombed. So did Hamare Tumhare where Sanjeev Kumar wanted to marry Rakhi. Basu Chatterjee’s Khatta Meetha got a slightly better opening. Maybe Ashok Kumar and Pearl Padamsee looked like they were married anyway. So nobody minded.

The alarming part of Mere Baap Pehle Aap is that Paresh Rawal and Shobana who are supposed to be ‘old’ people discovering belated love together, are both in their 40s.


Is that old? Especially in an industry where women are too taken up with their careers to worry about their biological clock. They tend to ‘settle down’ a little late in life. Or not at all. Look at the screen divas who made it, and those who didn’t. Hema Malini and Sridevi found love and motherhood in the arms of a married man. Both Hemaji and Sridevi in spite of breaking the social code have conducted their married lives with extreme dignity and grace.

No comments: