My Top Ten Love Stories

1) Pride and Prejudice- There is no love story as magical, wonderful and real as Lizzy and Darcy's. Has to be first on the list.

2) Qayamat se Qayamat Tak also known as QSQT- my all time favourite Hindi movie. I know, I know...it’s as cliché as cliché can get. But I can’t help myself. I loved Aamir then, and love him now. And I have lost count on how many times I have seen this movie. QSQT is to me what DDLJ is to other girls.

3) Pretty Woman- classic! Who can create magic better than Richard Gere and Julia Roberts? (I absolutely refuse to believe that he is gay as many gossip sites claim). Its also one of the first movies I saw with friends in Eros during Junior College days. Beautiful memories!

4) Maine Pyar Kiya- sigh! Blame it on my age. I was 15! But it has happy memories so I will not watch it now and ruin them. The movie was also responsible for the catch phrase "Dosti ka ek asool hai madam, no sorry, no thank you".

 

5) Ankhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se- loosely based on Erich Segal’s Love Story. (best romantic book ever by the way- even Sonam Kapoor was reading it in ‘I hate luv storys’). It starred Sachin (so cute!) and Ranjeeta (even cuter!) and it had a sad ending, which only made me like it more. And the title song is the one of most romantic songs ever.

6) Saath-Saath- A Farooq Shaikh-Deepti Naval starrer (one of the best on screen couples till date). It gave us one of Jagjit Singh’s best ghazals “tum ko dekha to yeh khayal aaya”. And it showed what happens to love after marriage. A true portrayal of a love story leading to marriage but with miraculously a happy ending.

7) Sleepless in Seattle- Meg Ryan is the rom-com queen and I can watch this movie multiple times over.

9) Only You- Marisa Tomei’s search of her soul mate since she was a child and a fortune teller at a carnival tells her she is destined to marry “Damon Bradley”. Of course as fate should have it she falls in love with a Peter- played by the devilishly handsome Robert Downey Jr. who just pretends to be Damon. What’s in a name? I will take RDJ even if his name was Bhola Prasad (ok may be I would get him to change his name first)

10) Chandni- Most Indian girls would be seriously offended that I did not count DDLJ, Dil to pagal hai, Kuch Kuch hota hai and other “Raj-Simran” type of movies in my top ten. Sorry! SRK just ruins it all for me. But I am a fan of the older Yash Chopra movies. Could not decide between Lamhe and Chandni and settle for the latter as I kinda like love triangles where the girl has to pick between 2 guys. And Sridevi never looked better!

11) Sailaab (the TV series not the movie)- Though I do feel that Madhuri’s item number in Sailaab the movie in a navari “Hum ko... aaj kal hai... intezaar...koi aaye... leke pyaar” is the best item number in the history of Indian cinema. Ok I digress... (And yes I know this is no. 11 and it says “Top 10” but I didn’t think anyone’s counting, and it’s my post, so live with it). Sailaab is the 2nd best TV show ever made in India (first one is Trishna). Sailaab aired in 1997 on Zee and starred Renuka Shahane (Madhuri’s sister from Hum apke hain kaun who dies), Sachin Khedekar (Tabu’s impotent husband from Astitva), Prajakti Deshmukh (who no one except me probably remembers) and Mahesh Thakur (plays cameos in many movies nowadays and was the dad in Shararat). Sailaab demonstrated a sensitive portrayal of love in an extra marital relationship between Shivani (Renuka) and Rohit (Sachin). But it is the Gaytri-Rohit story angle to watch out for. Very poignant and beautiful. A production by Ravi Rai- wish he would give us some more of this.

That’s my top 11 :)

Will end this post with a quote I came across recently and it stuck with me “Someday, someone, will walk into your life and will make you realize why it never worked out with anyone else”. (This, believe it or not, came up in an office meeting and I nearly had tears)

Valentine’s Day (the movie, not the Day) - SPOILER ALERT!

Valentine’s Day (or as Sanil calls it Valentime’s day) spells cliché. And to release a movie on Valentine’s Day weekend titled ‘Valentine’s Day’ is cliché raised to the power of 10000.


And yes I am a sucker for rom coms especially with the ones which have pretty much all of my favourite actors in one place (Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey). So cliché or not, it had to be watched.

And it was wonderful- especially to see that non- cliché characterizations. Julia Roberts as a Captain in the USA Army, returning on V-day for merely 24 hours, to meet not her man, but her son. Needless to say that was the only part of the movie where I cried.

McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) as the smart, handsome, dashing heart surgeon (well this Grey’s Anatomy hangover will not get old too soon) playing a married conniving adulterous SOB. Though that was little expected.

Eric Dane- looking hotter than he does as McSteamy- playing a gay guy who comes out of the closet for love. Awwww. And who should be his love interest but Bradley Cooper. Wow! When all along you were led to believe that Bradley would fall for Julia on their plane journey as ‘just-happened-to-be-seated-next-to-each-other-fate-meets-chemistry- coincidences’ (why don’t I ever get co-passengers like this?!). But he simply believed in love and was not in love with Julia when he made the ‘grand gesture’ of loaning her his limo. Nice touch there!

For a rom com movie buff there were also some kinda hidden funny gems. Taylor making a gag about being embarrassed to take his T-Shirt off (cute!). And Julia Robert’s reference on shopping on Rodeo Drive was simply priceless (remember the famous scene in Pretty Woman where she goes shopping in the high end shopping district posing as Richard Gere’s niece?).

And of course there were usual-tick-the-box-romantic-must-haves with child-teacher crush, singletons hate valentine’s gang, cynic turns mushy romantic, footballer-dancer (instead of cheer leader, we can’t get too cliché can we?), married for 3 decades and the spark still shines and 2 best friends realising that after all they are meant for each other.

Not to mention the multi-racial environment of LA being bought to life in- yes you guessed it- a cliché fashion. Mexican immigrant worker living the American dream, an Indian wedding complete with an old sardarji uncleji, goras doing the balle-balle, the usual.

At the end of it, Valentine’s Day beat up some clichés, re-created some existing ones and flogged some dead ones. But it did what it was supposed to do- make you smile and believe that magic exists (or at least can be created for 2 hours when a fabulous cast and talented director come together).