BOLLYWOOD'S FAVOURITE MEET-CUTE

Jab We Met turned compartments into confessionals, heartbreak into comedy, and small-town slang into Bollywood's coolest export

- BY RAHUL DESAI

I studied in a cool college whose tagline — “it’s not a college, it’s a way of life” — sounded worse as I grew older. Jab We Met (2007) hit theatres not too long after I graduated and, overcome by a surge of incoherent emotion, I remember describing it to friends as: it’s not a film, it’s a way of life. An embarrassing choice of words (with a theatrical pause), perhaps, but the essence mattered.

For Jab We Met quickly became an inextricable part of the Hindi film lexicon. The rom-com went word-of-mouth viral, back when social media was barely a thing. It acquired the loyalty and cultdom of a generation looking for their own Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. Moments became memes in a pre-meme era, and Pritam's music found that sweet spot between breezy Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and balmy Salim-Sulaiman.

Most of all, it started new trends, tropes and a whole mainstream language. Hinglish titles and sufi-flavoured Himalayan dashes aside, I've often cursed the film for triggering an endless wave of manic-pixie dream girl imitations (on and off screen) over the years. The 'bubbly' and indefatigable Punjabi heroine that Kareena Kapoor Khan immortalised was a solo female lead of sorts — and her name, Geet, became shorthand for next-gen writers to make viewers love and invest in a character without quite earning it. Post-Geet Bollywood has been haunted by the ghost of toxically happy and chatty extroverts.

The Cultural Connect
The main-apni-favourite-hu (I am my own favourite) vibe has defined characters and people across genres: where golden retriever energy meets born-yesterday idealism. Sometimes I even imagine that Tamasha's Ved modelled himself on Geet but got so carried away that he remained stranded on the fence between performance and truth. Sometimes I wish that Rockstar's Heer had never watched Jab We Met in her spare time. Sometimes I wonder if gems like