The Unusual Valentines

Roses from an anonymous sender delivered at the doorstep, strumming the guitar for her by the quay, her strawberry pink lips caressing his two-day old stubble – Bollywood is a montage of mushy sequences like these. But there are a few unusual love stories where the Valentines had to battle through past traumas, insecurities, loneliness, physical disabilities, and orthodoxy. Whether they won or lost in love is best left to interpretation and is immaterial. Their story of their battles themselves made for extraordinary romances.

Cover Image Caption

Guide (1966) – an ornate tragedy - Dancing talent Rosie is a self-respecting

woman who walks out of her much older and chauvinistic husband to live

with the charismatic young tour guide Raju, much to the outrage of the

society. But the undeterred Raju plays an active part in Rosie’s elevation as

an acclaimed dancer. Money and fame pour in. Unable to handle success,

Raju gets into drinking and gambling. Rosie becomes uncomfortable with this

and distances herself from him. Raju tries to break this ice curtain and begs

her for the same warmth and love. His fear and insecurity of losing Rosie

makes him commit a forgery and he gets jailed. Upon release, Raju lands up

in a village where he is assumed to be a godman whose 12-day fast would

bring rain to the drought-hit village. This torturous fast down to imminent

death is Raju’s true penance. Rosie comes to the village to meet him. As life

ebbs out of Raju, it pours with rain. The villagers rejoice while Rosie weeps

over his dead body. Raju had won back her love.

2. Khamoshi (1969) – nursing love - On getting dumped and humiliated by the

opportunistic Sulekha, poet/writer Arun recedes into acute mania that

included violent outbursts. In the mental hospital only nurse Radha can

control Arun since she has the experience of having miraculously cured

another patient Dev with a similar mental ailment in the past. That treatment

had required Radha to give personal care to Dev, including motherly love. On

getting cured Dev, despite his gratitude towards Radha, marries another

woman, leaving Radha shattered because her love for Dev had been genuine.

Not wanting to go through another break-up Radha refuses to take up Arun’s

case. After much persuasion, Radha responds to the call of duty knowing

fully well that what fate held for her. Arun is quickly cured of his trauma. But

since Radha’s love was not pretense, the woman in Radha is unable to take

this impending separation from Arun. Now, she goes insane. But a grateful

Arun promises to wait for her for the rest of his life.

3. Barfi! (2012) – dumb charades – Lovely young Shruti finds in the deaf and

mute Barfi a rare honesty in the way he declares through sign language that

he had lost his heart to her. His was more an act of dumb charades rather

than a projection of a disability. Barfi’s communication is unalloyed by

ambivalent language or selective listening. Ironically it is Shruti who, despite

normally functioning vocal and aural faculties, cannot prevail upon her

parents and is married off elsewhere. But destiny brings them back together

six years later. By now Shruti is estranged from her husband and Barfi’s love

interest is his childhood friend, the autistic heiress Jhilmil. This unusual love

triangle progresses with a fascinating chemistry between the three despite

varied communication standards. At the climax of the plot layered with

confusions and conspiracies, Shruti has the chance to take Barfi away for

herself by taking advantage of his deafness. But she stops and signals to him

with her eyes. He turns around and sees Jhilmil calling out to him. Barfi and

Jhilmil reunite forever. Having made the sacrifice, Shruti remains their well-

wisher forever.

4. The Lunchbox (2013) – Process (in)efficiency – An estimated 5000 Mumbai

Dabbawalas transport 200,000 lunchboxes with home cooked food from

homes to workplaces every day, their process efficiency estimated to be a six

sigma one i.e. a mere 3.4 wrong deliveries per million deliveries. Ila’s

lunchbox packed with delicious food meant for her husband Rajeev landing

up with the elderly widower Saajan Fernandes instead was one such error.

The path to a man’s heart is through his stomach, they say, especially if the

man is a loner like Saajan who is close to retirement from his mundane desk

job, with nothing exciting to look forward to. The realization of this wrong

delivery opens a communication between Ila and Saajan through handwritten

notes delivered in one of the compartments of the lunchbox. They learn that

both are lonely in their own way and soon discover an emotional anchor in

each other, albeit a faceless one. Months roll by. Saajan and Ila may finally

meet, after all – with help from the dabbawalla who made the welcome

mistake in the first place.

5. Badhaai Do (2022) – Rainbow romance – Alan Turing, the brilliant

mathematician was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts and made to

undergo chemical castration. He died two years later from suspected suicide

by poisoning. Ramchandra Siras was a linguist and author and a Professor at

Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). In Feb 2010, a TV camera crew caught him

having consensual sex with a male rickshaw puller and was suspended by

AMU for gross misconduct. Siras won the case but died soon after in a case of

suspected murder. In Badhaai Do Shardul has a break-up with Kabir but

finds a new lover in Guru Narayan. Meanwhile Shardul’s wife Suman falls in

love with Rimjhim. Their families are aghast and scandalized at their sexual

orientation. But they learn that this is the new era of Inclusivity. Shardul and

Suman adopt a baby and Rimjhim and Guru Narayan join the adoption ritual

too. As the LGBTQ community take out a brightly colored rainbow parade

with placards reading ‘I am proud of my gay son’, one wishes Turing and

Siras had lived to see the film