In Zoya Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara , two estranged friends embark upon a bachelor trip across Spain with the third, Kabir (Abhay Deol), to honour a boyhood pact and celebrate his final days of singlehood.
Imraan (Farhan Akhtar) is the flaky man-child; he has sailed through life with a suppressed conscience and bagful of escapist one-liners. Arjun (Hrithik Roshan) is the self-serious workaholic; he thinks he’s better than the rest, and this “distraction” is more of a favour to Kabir for being the perfect Sameer (Saif Ali Khan, in Dil Chahta Hai , epitomised the safe “middle-friend” figure – the diplomatic bridge required to connect two theatrically fragile, and more mainstream, personalities) of their broken tricycle.
At one point, Imraan flings Arjun’s precious cellphone out a moving vehicle in jest. This tomfoolery reignites old tensions. Arjun uses this incident as an excuse to pour out pent-up resentments. He explodes.
We discover it was over a girl. It’s always over a girl.
You sense here that they were once inseparable. You sense that Imraan’s callous attitude was maybe aspirational for Arjun back then, until he became an unsuspecting victim of it. You sense they were the Akash and Sid of their generation; that they might have respected one another for being so different, so incompatible. And, that the docile Kabir had been a submissive device who helped their opposites attract harder; he enables their film.
You sense their college days, no doubt inspired by the same film that makes Arjun slap Imraan with unrequited rage. He should have done this long ago, he thinks, just like a sensitive Sid (Akshaye Khanna, in DCH ) had silenced Akash (Aamir Khan) – again, over a woman.
Dramatic confrontations
That’s the thing about cinematic estrangement. The act of separation is invariably confrontational. It’s always a “scene,” rarely a sequence. There’s an absolute, singular moment of drama embodying a sudden (but long-simmering) clash of temperaments. Both characters become furiously aware that they might never speak again. The viewers are made violently aware of this conflict’s permanence. It’s rarely a slow-burning battle of principles, where they gradually fall out after excessive contemplation.
Reconciliation, too, is specific – often reduced to one heartwarming hug or teary phone call. It’s rarely an organic extension of natural evolution, but more a result of dramatic external factors.
There’s nothing like mortality – the notion of a fading life – to put life’s inadequacies into perspective. Like an impending death (Sid’s forbidden love, Tara, is dying when Akash returns to support him); cheating death (in 3 Idiots , Raju Rastogi embraces Rancho after he saves his paralysed father); certain death (estranged father and son are reunited by the matriarch’s funeral, in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham ); or even the belated knowledge of death: In Dear Maya , a rational Ana (Madiha Imam) resents her mercurial ex-friend Ira (Shreya Chowdhary) for a misadventure until, years later, Ira opens up about how she lost her boyfriend in an accident. Ana instantly empathises with the lost little girl who was forced to grow up. They hug, and immediately rekindle their childhood chemistry.
Perhaps that’s where ZNMD stands out as a more authentic meditation on incomplete relationships.
Moving forward
Arjun’s explosion suggests they never got closure, but chose to drift apart earlier. They never visibly make up either, after the resounding slap. They forgive without forgetting and grow into a new kind of adult companionship. Their language remains uncomfortable, and you sense that both are observing each other rediscover themselves through this journey. They’re watching each other be vulnerable, face fears and make personal transitions – which is, at times, the most intimate way of recognising a familiar stranger. It’s impossible to simply continue from where they left off. A young equation gives way to a quieter, platonic one.
In between, Imraan’s stepfather had died, and Arjun had moved away. But none of those seminal landmarks brought them back together.
Life did.
Over the last decade, I’ve attended family funerals. I’ve lived, made mistakes, fallen and grown. Through it all, I’d check my phone expectantly at the end of every ordeal. But there were no new messages. No condolences, no congratulations.
Reaching out
I knew where he was. I kept track of his life. And deaths. I wondered if he did the same. I wondered if he, too, expected a text when his uncle passed away. Or when he got married. We didn’t have any Sameer or Kabir to prod us back in contact. We had never confronted each other, and just faded away – over, of course, a girl. There was no showdown. We were so close that an invisible sense of betrayal stemmed from great – broken – expectations.
Last July, when Roger Federer lay face-first on the grass of Wimbledon during his semifinal defeat to Milos Raonic, my phone buzzed.
“Don’t worry, he’s not done yet,” it prompted.
“It’s over,” I texted back mournfully, mirroring the pessimistic rant I had inflicted upon humankind during Federer’s loss to Marat Safin at the 2005 Australian Open.
That’s when we had first connected.
And this is where we reconnected.
Of course. It had to be.
This was the only funeral he knew I needed him at. This was consolation only he could have given. He always knew that loss, defeat, death and deflation began and ended on tennis courts for me. In hindsight, a reunion through life’s other generic tragedies would have been as banal as an annual birthday card. This was a more customised, and appropriate, brand of recoupling.
Looking back
But it hasn’t been instant healing. There is no reset button. We’ve sensed a decade’s worth of growth without discussing it. We’ve sensed all the missed time, beers and heartbreaks. It’s not like we can just go back to being close buddies.
Things will clearly never be the same again.
But do they need to be? Do we need to remake an old film? Do we need to restore factory settings when newer versions would have rendered us obsolete anyway?
Both of us are writers today. Perhaps just reading each other’s words – the real-life equivalent of Imraan’s ruminative poetry scoring Arjun’s increasingly reflective moods – is the only rekindling we understand. Finding a new bond within an old one is easier than willing an old friendship to feel new.
