Aamir's Guru

Aamir Khan tries to recapture the passion of Guru Dutt and talks about the changing definition of romance. All in Cine Blitz's new book, love and longing in hindi cinema

'We loved even when we lived in the caves'

"Romance has no one definition. The beauty is that you can give it the meaning you want. You don't have to conform to anybody else's idea. It is a personal sentiment, open to individual interpretations, not to be confined or restricted to any one particular era or people.

"Each generation responds uniquely to its own immediate history. Impressions made in our formative years often stay with us for life. I watched films like Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Awara, and Shri 420 when I was at that impressionable age and they left a huge impact on me. But youngsters in their teens today might not connect with those films at all.

I remember when I watched K L Saigal's movies with my parents I found them extremely funny. I never understood why my parents went ballistic over them. I would laugh at Saigal. I liked Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan. I thought they were great. But probably my son won't! The point I'm trying to make is that the films we call as romantic classics, films like Kaagaz Ke Phool or Awara or Mughal-E-Azam, it is not necessary that they will evoke the same response from the younger generation. The 16-year olds of today might find them boring! But does that mean that the modern day youngster is not romantic enough?

"May be romance, as we remember it, doesn't exist any longer but maybe something else has replaced it. This generation's idea of romance might be SMSing or chatting or clubbing and pubbing together and it might not concur with our idea of romance but that's a viewpoint.

If you are in love even sending messages on cell phones can be romantic. And who decides what's romantic and what's not? Another 20 years down the line, with more sophisticated technologies coming in, people might say ke, 'Yaar' hamare zamaane mein SMS bhejne mein jo romance tha, usme kya baat thi, abhi woh maza nahi raha'. Pick up a college-going student of today and ask him what his favourite romantic scene is; he might cite a Shah Rukh film, or Saif's or mine or any other film of this decade. He might like it as much as we like Mughal-E-Azam.

"Our techniques might change depending on passing centuries, our means and resources might change, the way we express might change but we can't stop expressing.

I don't think we change fundamentally. We loved even when we lived in the caves, and we will continue to love even after we start holidaying on the moon! We fought wars centuries ago and we continue to do so in some manner or the other.

I read this book called the Arthashastra, written by Chanakya in 300 BC. It is the oldest book of management in the world. More than 2,000 years later strategists all over the world still refer to this book because, they say, the Arthashastra is a book about the management of the human mind, which has remained the same since ages. When you read it you do realise that in 2,000 years man hasn't changed at all. Only his accessories have changed."