20 years of Paheli: Shah Rukh Khan-Rani Mukerji starrer feminist, dreamlike love story has aged gloriously well

‘Paheli’ is a deeply fascinating title. It is deceptively simple, yet dense with suggestion. A word that breathes poetry into the everyday, that lives between the literal and the symbolic. It can be a riddle, yes, but also its resolution. It invites contemplation and still manages to offer closure.

- 

In the context of Amol Palekar’s 2005 fantasy film, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji, the title becomes something else entirely. Many still argue that the film might have been better served by the title ‘Duvidha,’ the original 1973 film by Mani Kaul, which serves as inspiration for Palekar's 2005 rendition. But the truth is: ‘Duvidha’ as a word could never fit into what Palekar was trying to convey. After all, he wasn't telling the story of a ghost, but of love — ghostly in its own right, not dead, not alive, just endlessly recurrent.