“Rab”bing it in

Note: The reader is responsible for his/her own pinch of salt (s)he will be taking this with. The stuff you read is solely my opinion and it doesn't really matter whether you agree or disagree.

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In a world where truths like mate hunting, grooming, courtship, and shaadi.com exist, not necessarily in that order, the alternative school of belief that preaches that God takes care of your soul mate hunt is somewhat worth debating. Of course reverting to anything remotely related to God for things gone wrong in life is instinctive and age old. But I find it amusing that God challenges the evolutionary school of thought and thereby mocks the concept that man must find his own mate, and in the process, learn the basic skills of grooming, hunting, and courting.

It’s a relief for many I’m sure, especially those belonging to the frustrating, unmet and un”mated” life. A very starry eyed teenager preparing for my boards, I’d sighed in relief when Madhuri Dixit in Dil To Pagal Hai (DTPH) had beamed with confidence upon SRK’s question of how to identify if the person you just met was the one, pointing Heavenword, “Woh tumhe batayega” (God will tell you). I had happily gone back to my chemistry books, a heavily bespectacled and pimple faced high school aspirant, believing in Madhuri’s theory combined with ma’s theory that a good student always finds the right husband. And that too- on time.

Over and over again, Bollywood has tried resurrecting the belief that God is going to take care of something as important, and also as painstaking, frustrating and time taking as finding a mate. 5 years before DTPH, Kajol, in a similarly starry eyed role in DDLJ, had reverted to finding the “anjana chehra” and “jise maine dekha nahi” (The unknown face of the lover she had never seen). The force of God, and equally powerful being the force of the invisible and unknown, had surely made every teenager believe that the man of your dreams was the unseen, unknown stranger who’d knock your doorbell one fine morning, and was of course Godsent.

A decade after DTPH, Rab ne banaa di jodi (RNBDJ) once again tries to infuse similar beliefs in the name of God. Matches are made in Heaven, and are sent to us on planet earth in the most unlikely and untimely way. How else would you explain the wedding of the two protagonist right after the lady lost her fiancé and her father in a matter of days? Because God had made the match long ago in Heaven, and by some quirk of fate, had sent your mate on planet earth and had conspired a co-ordinate crossing in the most unusual circumstances.

I can think of many other movies that preached the concept of God match making and sending us out mates in a weird array of coincidental events. This was meant to be a relief for not just the ones who hadn’t found their mates (God will take care of it), but the ones with mismatched mates. The day you realized you’d married a buffoon for a husband, you could conveniently blame it all on fate and God, that it was God who decided the match, and the only thing important was, not money, not status, not the make of the car he drove, not the team he worked for in Microsoft, but the fact that “Woh tumhe deewanon ki tarah chahega” (He will love you insanely) (Courtesy: RNBDJ). Frankly, I once bought into this theory of God taking care of my single status and sending me the right man at the right time. Probably my stupidity explains the reason why I am still single, and highly run the risk of dying a spinster.

sunshine