Yesterday, on 12 December 2014, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, one of the greatest love story of bollywood, celebrated whooping 1000 weeks of uninterrupted shows in Maratha Mandir, a theater located in heart of bollywood, Mumbai.

It released on 19, October 1995 in India and soon enough reached the top of the film industry. Crowd went crazy to watch it and till the last date, theaters saw long queues and houseful signs. Though there were no mobiles, social networks, hell there was no internet in India (it was just 2 months baby), it managed to attract thousands people. So, what was in it, that enchanted people’s hearts and spread over it’s charming, stylish, foolish, loving, never ending, dramatic yet realistic charisma.

Magic of DDLJ

Though I am not a die-hard DDLJ fan like others, I still like it. As far as I know, this film brought fashion of short-form naming conventions in Bollywood. After Heer-Ranjha, Romeo-Juliet, Laila-Majnu it was Raj-Simran who turned out to be ever hit couple.

People used to rush to theaters again and again, to take glimpses of their newly born love idols. Many times, they used to go so much crazy that, theater security personnel had to use bamboo sticks, bi-cycle rubber tubes to charge them. (Well, that was a totally different era, they can’t use it now in posh and polished film houses, so called multiplex, its 2014.) I didn’t go to watch it, when my family visited theater. Back then, I was not really a go-to-theater guy, but a study loving, astronomy-science oriented kid, seriously. My sister still teases me on not watching it in theater.

Aditya Chopra, son of legendary director Yash Chopra, directed DDLJ and pushed it to the ultimate level. Story of DDLJ came on to paper, when Aditya thought to create a new love story for the youth of 90s. He decided the baseline of story, where couple and their families residing abroad but Indian by heart, boy and girl meets in train, they fell in love, but they still wants to marry with permissions of both families, and all. Striping out the dramatic parts, it was and became reality in 90s and have had happened with many such pairs. Raj was named after legendary actor-producer-director Raj Kapoor. He chose Europe, where Raj-Simran travels with their friends and meet each other on train at an awkward moment. Aditya had shoot many awesome shots like, Raj-Simran while boarding a train, palat-palat-palat scene over a bridge in Switzerland, Raj lands in Sarso-ke-khet and welcomes Simran like in above picture and many more. Music given by famous pair Jatin-Lalit still feels melodious. Everyone remembers that ear-catching and tune of DDLJ. Anand Bakshi wrote the ever green songs which Lataji, Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Ashaji put on to very next level and were good enough to make crowd go mad an fall in love…again and again…<3

Effects on people

DDLJ was truly a trendsetter, not only in bollywood but in other sectors of India too. It started many trends in market and one of the biggest was Europe tour. It turned out to be extremely beneficial for Indo-European tourism and hotelling industry later. Youth loved and followed Shahrukh’s cruiser bike ride, goofy hairstyle, floppy leather jacket styles.

I hope it continues to enrich the screen and our life and break its own records in upcoming years. At last, I just want to quote couple of lines of awesome poetry by Anand Bakshi and awesomely sung by Kumar Sanu..
(I bet you will actually hear that mandolin tune while reading them..)

Tujhe dekha to ye jaanaa sanam…
pyar hota hai deewanaa sanam…
ab yaha se kaha jaayein hum…
teri baahon me mar jaayein hum….

After all, it says, come..fall in love again..<3<3 …which is never gonna end… 😉