A Perspective on the Misunion between Amitabh and Rekha

You have to watch the following video before you read this entry: heartwrenching Silsila scene

Yes! I hate you Amit! I hate you! Yeh sab kyun ho gaya! Tumne aise kyun kiya! Kyun! I hate you!

Oh man. I have watched this movie like twenty times. This scene never fails to make me question the basic premise on which my whole belief system is built on. This scene never fails to make my heart cringe in utter despair and quandary because two people so deeply in love left a life of passion and foundation-building they could have explored together. This scene goes against my religion, my ritual, the thought I sleep with every night, the belief I wake up with every morning: that two people in Love will do anything for each other. That no reason, no circumstance (except for unhealthy behavior like abuse and so on), no hardship in practical reality would make either decide to leave the other. No person could even think of kissing someone else knowing that they are tied so deeply together in soul (or am I making an assumption here that they are two halves of the whole.) You just wouldn't leave and marry someone else (of course a lot of Indian people of my parents generation would beg to differ including my own parents. May I just say that I somewhat understand where they're coming from. They are indeed, the sandwich generation, stuck between their parents/old school cultural expectations and their childrens' rebellions. I truly feel bad for them. I mean look at me, I turned out all messed up. What did my mother really get out of it. Ok, back to the main point.)

In any case, I know it's just a film but this kind of thing happens. I had mentioned earlier the tragedy of the misunion between Heer and Ranjha and how the family/cultural/societal conditionings I felt ultimately caused their downfall. But then I also questioned whether they really could have done something different in order to finally be together. I pose the same questions relevant to the story of Silsila: why did Amitabh and Rekha truly break apart? Did Amitabh really have to marry the woman who would have become his sister-in-law had his brother not died in a tragic plane crash? Did he truly have to marry the then-pregnant Jaya who was left alone with no future and no man? Was there an alternative? Were he, Jaya, and Jaya's mother just not willing to face the cruel judgments that would come from an Indian society toward a woman out of wedlock? What was the real motive? Why did he leave Rekha? Did he pity Jaya? If so,why did his love for Rekha not defeat his feelings of pity for Jaya? Why did he really feel stuck? Did he feel guilty for what his brother left behind? Was Amitabh truly a strong man? Did he really have to take the situation into his own hands especially since neither Jaya's father was alive nor were his parents there to help? Was he truly dutiful? Did he do the right thing?

And most importantly, why did Amitabh think that it was truly worth breaking Rekha's heart?

As you can tell, I came out of the womb asking 'why' 'why 'why' 'why this' 'why that' and I just can't seem to stop. So why? Rekha and Amitabh are such a hot couple together. Honestly, even in real life they should have been together. Damn. They are fine.

To further support why I think they should have been together, please watch the following interview where Rekha talks about her feelings for Amit ji: Interview

See what I mean. Even though she said it in a bit of a convoluted way, she obviously loves him like a lover. By the way, isn't Rekha just ravishing. Wow. Absolute Goddess.

And guess which song she chose to sing on the spot: Song

Anyway, I have had various discussions about the endings of films such as Silsila and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam with friends where I felt that the lovers should have ended up together and my friends felt otherwise. In the case of Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam, I truly feel that Aishwarya and Salman got totally gipped. They so deserved to be together. It's Aishwarya's stubborn and ignorant-headed father who made Salman leave (because he threatened Salman that he would sit on him and crush him to pieces) so what else could Salman do. He had to go. And then Aishwarya married Ajay Devgan and lived a life of boring wifehood.

But in the case of Silsila, I do believe the following: that Amitabh and Rekha had the potential to be a firecracker of a couple. They would have been dynamite. I mean it would have been poetry and chocolates every day. They would have oozed sensuality wherever they went and people wouldn't have been able to stop ogling at them. Sigh. But somehow it didn't happen. Here are possible reasons why:

1) Rekha is quite possibly mangalik, so Amitabh had unconscious fears about being with her due to this particular astrological reason.

2) Rekha's hair always got stuck in his watch when they made love so it was just too much of a hassle to deal with.

3) hmmmm....

4) Amitabh didn't think Rekha would approve of that song he sang with Shekhar that one night they got drunk: "Neeche paan ki dukaan, uppar gori ka makaan, zara jhoom jhoom ke, zara jhoom jhoom ke.."

5) hmmmm...

Ok no seriously, I think confusion and fear played a part. He may have had some unconscious anxieties around his relationship with Rekha and he just didn't go through the psychotherapy to deal with it. Or maybe he truly felt that it was his duty not just as a man, but as a brother to help his dead brother out. Maybe he didn't fully grieve the death of his brother; maybe he felt Jaya was a piece of his brother and that by being close to Jaya he would be close to his brother in some convoluted psychological effed-up way. Or maybe by marrying Jaya, Amitabh felt like he could somehow keep a control over his emotions and his life so that he didn't have to fall into a pit of despair, confusion, grief and overwhelmingness over his brother's death. Or maybe the Law of Attraction was at work here. Or maybe...maybe...maybe.......

So this is what I'm thinking. After all the pondering, to be honest, I just don't know. I don't know why Amitabh didn't choose Rekha. I guess it just is what it is. And what I've realized further is that quite possibly it isn't important to know why. At least not yet. Maybe it's ok not to know why things happen or don't happen for the time being.

Breather......

You can't tell anyone what to do. You can't tell any pair of people that what they have is deep and True and the real thing. You have to figure that out for yourself. Maybe Amitabh felt that Rekha wasn't truly his other half. Maybe he found something in Jaya that he felt he needed. Or maybe Amitabh and Rekha were truly two halves of the same whole but it just wasn't meant to be in this lifetime (either in the film or in real life): Sacred contracts. Maybe they contracted before they came into the planet that they would meet, have some experiences with each other, go through the emotions, learn whatever they had to and then move on. Maybe they'll meet in body and mind in the next life. Or maybe, just maybe......they didn't grab the potential!

Maybe Amitabh didn't know how to fulfill the potential after his brother died. Alternatively, maybe he didn't care for the real thing. Maybe he didn't want her anymore. Maybe he didn't care for a life of bliss and passion. Maybe Amitabh thought it was worth breaking Rekha's heart because it just was. Maybe he had no balls. That's just what he wanted to do. We all do what we want in the end don't we?

You know I don't think there's anything wrong with a man feeling fear. I know men are told to be brave all the time and that they're not supposed to cry. Of course this varies a bit from culture to culture. One time my dad and I were talking about some life difficulty and he said something like "and I can't even cry because I'm a man." And I thought whoa. That's gotta be rough. It's gotta be rough to not be able to cry. Sometimes we cry not only because we're hurt but because we're confused and scared and fearful. Sometimes we just cry because we cry. We don't have to have a reason for why we feel the way we do. We just feel the way we do. So for God's sakes, let men cry. Let them feel. Let them feel their suffering, let them FEEL the fear. Let them have their journey. Let them find their way (oh dear, I'm starting to get dramatic.)

Things just happened so fast for Amitabh. I wonder if he had let himself feel the fear, the hurt, the loss, and the grief from losing his brother, things would have been different. I just can't help but feel that his brother's death had a huge impact on his state of mind at the time. I wonder if he could have just held off a bit and not made any decisions. I wonder had he sent a letter to Rekha that instead of saying 'I can't be with you anymore because..." said "Look, something horrible has happened. Something terrible. I'm confused. Can you help me." I wonder if things could have been different. I wonder if Rekha could have helped him see more clearly.

Honestly I don't know how they did it. I don't know how Amitabh and Rekha went on to live their lives without each other. I can't fathom it. I personally don't agree with the ending of the film. Suddenly Amitabh and Rekha don't want each other (after they decided they did while they were married because they felt they had got gipped) after Rekha's husband almost die in the plane crash. Oh well, maybe Rekha was fearful too. Maybe that's why she needed him so badly. But then again I didn't make the story. I can't tell them to be together. They chose. They both chose in the end to stay with their spouses. They didn't choose each other. That's just the way it has to be. That's just the way it has to be even though I feel it is an utter tragedy.

That's just what happens when....hmmm....

[some sort of insert]

Oh wait...I've had an epiphany: Amitabh messed up. He didn't have any balls. The man couldn't control his emotions and ended up making decisions out of his fear and self-absorption. I guess that's what happens when you can't get it up. Duh, right? Gee thanks Amitabh. Thanks for leading Rekha on, real smooth, you're a real man, you're a reeaaalllll man.

Anyway....

This is a perspective on the misunion between Amitabh and Rekha: star-crossed lovers, doomed from the start.

Neela aasmaan so gaya...