Influence Bollywood style!

Bollywood…..glitzy, glamorous, starry eyed Bollywood. The girls of our generation grew on it. It was our very first guide to tender love as we blossomed into the exciting and confusing teen years and SRK was its mascot. We dreamt of meeting the perfect one as we witnessed wonderful, playful and utterly passionately SRK romancing his heroines onscreen. While other teens were obsessed with studying hard, scoring the most marks, topping the classes, I had other dreams of my own. All these worldly tensions didn’t matter when the silver screen lit up with His presence. Yes, I use a capital H when referring to Him as a mark of utter and total respect for the one man that somewhat contributed to my personality. While there are important men in my life like my dad, granddad and my husband, of course, this one man, SRK, has always had a steady presence.

All his movies gave us, giggly teens, the hope that (ahem!) someone somewhere is out there for you…we lived on that hope and some of us still do. For me, it came true to the T. All his Rahuls and Rajs gave us the fodder to create our own dream boys. He provided something like a catalogue of qualities we’d like in our man. Every character he played had some pros that I’d absolutely love and some cons which were annoying yet endearing. Watching his movies actually helped me realize what I want and don’t want in my guy which finally led me to meet The Guy of my dreams who I instantly knew I must marry (and I did J. Though I don’t think he’d be too amused to know that SRK movies helped me pick my life partner :P ) What I’m trying to say is that his movies might be total chick flicks, rom coms, make believe stories, but his influence does make you stop and think. It makes you ask why you cannot have what you see on screen rather than accepting some glib, boring setup when making a huge life changing decision like marriage. His movies make you want to break the mould and search for that perfect one rather than accepting your “fate”. Laugh all you want at the childish idol worship but what I’m talking about is far beyond that. It’s a shift in your thinking process, however small it may be.

Just as I adored his on screen persona, his off screen personality also greatly appealed to my sensibilities. Be his passionate outlook towards his craft or his contagious enthusiasm, his charisma or his ability to dream The Dream, watching him achieve his dreams, in some ways, enabled me to fulfill my own. Seeing him steadily climb the ladder of social and economic success, especially starting out from humble surroundings gave me the hope to dream that dream which seemed so out of my reach at that moment. Now when I look back, those dreams seem quite achievable. But from my vantage point back then, they were pretty big ambitions.

Bottom line, what Mr. Khan taught me the most was to develop the abilities to dream bigger than what seems possible at that moment. You may not achieve those dreams instantly but you sure created a path towards fulfilling them. In some ways he cajoled me (no pun intended there!) into taking control of my own life and breaking free of practiced thought patterns when it came to determining my capabilities