Maine Pyar Kiya. It was the year 1989 when MPK had released. I wished
to watch the movie in a cinema hall, but alas! I had no one to go
with. Anyhow, I finally got to see the movie on VCR some 3-4 months
later. There was very little action in the movie, one of them was
Salman Khan [Prem] doing a do-do haath with Mohnish Behl [Jeevan] .
Before Prem and Jeevan jumped into the duel, they had a small war of
words. Jeevan was spewing venom with his incisive words while
insinuating that something was definitely on between Prem and Suman
[Bhagyashree] and he uttered the historic dialogue: ek ladka-ladki
kabhi dost nahi hote.
Innocent that I was, I did not get the meaning of it back then. I
assumed that since they were eventually going to fall in love, where
was the need for being friends and even if they were friends why did
Prem feel so hurt. Anyways, I saw the movie quite a few times and was
thoroughly entertained everytime.
In the mid 90’s cable-tv was a rage and even we got it installed.
Movies were beaming 24×7 and on one such day I caught the movie ‘When
Harry Met Sally’ on Star Movies. Just 10 minutes into the movie and
Billy Crystal spoke those ominous words:You realize of course that we
could never be friends.
I went into a tizzy, what was Harry saying! Was he out of his mind.
Harry went onto explain:
Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I’m saying is — and this is not a come-on in any way,
shape or form — is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex
part always gets in the way.
Sally: That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no
sex involved.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I’m saying is they all want to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds
attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he
finds unattractive?
Harry: No, you pretty much want to nail ‘em too.
Sally: What if they don’t want to have sex with you?
Harry: Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so
the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally: Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.
And then it all came back to me. I understood why Prem and Suman could
not be friends. And I understood what Jeevan had implied.
I did a bit of research about the release of these two movies and much
to my surprise I found that both the movies released in 1989. While
WHMS had released in July, MPK had released in December. But howcome
two people in two different parts of the globe struck the same
concept. I am still perplexed how this happened, similar thought
pattern running in two different minds from two different cultures. Of
course, the Indian version was more subtle and needed some
deciphering.
Later on in the movie, after another 10 minutes of the previous
sequence Harry makes an ammendment to his earlier proposition. The
conversation between them goes like this:
Harry: Staying over?
Sally: Yes.
Harry: Would you like to have dinner?
Harry: Just friends.
Sally: I thought you didn’t believe men and women could be friends.
Harry: When did I say that?
Sally: On the ride to New York.
Harry: No no no no, I never said that. Yes, that’s right, they can’t
be friends. Unless both of them are involved with other people then
they can. This is an amendment to the earlier rule, if the two
people are in relationships, the pressure of possibilty of involvement
is lifted. That doesn’t work either because what happens then is the
person you’re involved with can’t understand why you need to be
friends with the person you’re just friends with. Like it means
something is missing from their relationship and “why do you have to
go outside to get it?”. Then when you say, “no no no no, it’s not
true nothing’s missing from the relationship”, the person you’re
involved with then accuses you of being secretly attracted to the
person you’re just friends with, which we probably are, I mean, come
on, who the hell are we kidding, let’s face it, which brings us back
to the earlier rule before the amendment which is men and
women can’t be friends, so where does that leave us?
Sally: Harry.
Harry: What?
Sally: Goodbye.
Harry: Oh, OK.
The thought that trigerred off this post was a sequence in the movie
‘Rab Ne…’ where we had a drunk Raj/Suri rambling to himself after
Bobby had passed-out, he said ‘ladka-ladki kabhi dost nahi hote’;
implying that sooner or later Taani would fall in love with Raj. And
so, the legend of Harry-Sally lives on.
This post was first published on PFC
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