• 

Why do we like a song?

There are a million reasons why we prefer a certain melancholic song over others, why a specific song connects with our emotions, why we give the space of our conscious memory to it, why we take the effort to memorize its lyrics?

Why, is it that we play a certain song repeatedly, when we are cruising along on a dark lonely highway,. Hota Hai na !

That brings me to the immensely popular song Aye Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM)…and the reason why I like it because of sequence of scenes before the song….

Here it goes –

The plot of ADHM is not complicated, it is simpler than its name. Remember this is a KJ movie, so don’t expect an “Inception”

Ayaan loves Alizeh, Alizeh loves DJ Ali but Ayaan and Alizeh are best friends. Oh wait! Isn’t this Dil To Pagal Hai? Or Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or….

Naah! Yahan par Kahani mein twist. To avoid any confusion created by his previous films, KJ makes everyone super rich, everyone super-hot and everyone same religion. So basically, the characters have no survival issues like- Maa ke kangan girvi rakhna etc.

The problem statement is simple…It is a narrative of many one-sided love stories. To phir kya yeh shape ek traingle hai the nation wants to know? Ek tarfa pyaar ki taqat tum kya jaano Arnab babu

Ayaan cannot grasp this complex dynamic of two people being mentally so compatible yet not be in love. He doesn’t get that Love is not always about chemistry and compatibility, sometimes it is just some strange concoction of mysterious elements or simply just that you get stuck to someone and cannot untangle yourself.

Alizeh is emotionally stuck with DJ Ali and Ayaan is stuck with Alizeh….

Saba, the sultry poetess that Ayaan is living with makes Ayaan realize that he is still obsessed with Alizeh and a change of partner or a new relationship won’t help him heal…. He needs to liberate himself…

Ayaan realizes this ….and thus begins this Sequence leading up to Aye Dil Hai Mushkil Song…

Ayaan has a moment of realization; he sprints through the streets of Vienna as if his life depends on it. Wait! Isn’t that SRK in KKHH or was that KKKG?  May be in both. These recurring K’s make me dizzy.

Coming back to Ayaan! He meets Alizeh who is with her handsome hunk husband DJ Ali, and requests her to let him go …To let him move on….Although, she is not the one who is holding him back…Yet, the fact is that he has kept a version of himself hostage with Alizeh…He cannot move forward unless he lets himself loose and lets her go….

Ayaan walks back out on to the main road close to a lamppost. It is here that he comprehends the enormity of his decision…He is distraught…He falls on his knees….His heart is aching…Racing…

and right at that very moment the key strokes of the piano lead you into the song…

Tere bina gavara aye dil hai mushkil…..

The beautiful lyrics are penned by Amitabh Bhattacharya, Arjit Singh is crooning Pritam’s composition but …

I like this song because of the sequence of the scenes before ….

The ritual of releasing yourself from the captivity of a one-sided love or a love that doesn’t exist anymore…

-Sunayana Kachroo