Dil Ka Rishta

One of the songs that cropped up on the Raaga non-stop channels was from the movie Dil ka Rishta and it stirred up memories. Its been a long time since I wrote a detailed movie review and Dil Ka Rishta really deserves one. In case you are searching your memory to remember when in the recent past such a movie get released, don't! It got released some three years ago and I had the "good" fortune of seeing this movie with a bunch of friends. Actually this is not a review per se. For all the people who missed this gem, I am chronicling some of the more brilliant sequences of the movie. Here goes!

Dil Ka Rishta is a total family enterprise from the Ash Rai family. Mom Vrinda has penned the script, bro Aditya produced the movie and obviously, it stars Ash. You are never allowed to forgot the last piece of info throughout the movie.

Ash is a teacher at a deaf and dumb school for children. The school organizes a charity program to raise money and Arjun Rampal is one of the invitees. Normally, when a school for deaf and dumb children holds a charity program, you would expect the children to feature in it. Right? Wrong! Instead we have "teacher" Ash Rai dancing on a stage surrounded by a whole bunch of hunky guys. Anyways, this performance results in Arjun promptly falling in love with Ash.

Then comes the twist - Ash is already happily married to Priyanshu Forgot-the-last-name and they also have a baby. On discovering this, poor Arjun does exactly what rejected Bollywood heroes do - he starts drinking. One night he drowns his sorrows in a little too much drink before driving and accidentally rams into a car. This particular car unfortunately carries Ash and Priyanshu returning from a party and bam! Priyanshu dies in the accident while Ash loses her memory. In case you had missed all the umpteen closeups of Ash so far and thought that this movie was not produced by her family, in the overturned car, they show the "dead" Priyanshu behind a close-up of Ash. Come on guys, be fair! Usually even extras get shown in solo-close-ups when they "die".

Anyways, the scene shifts to the hospital. Ash has just woken up and everyone (Ash's mother (the screen one, not the real one), Ash's baby, Arjun and his dad (Paresh Rawal)) is there. Now the doctor makes the great pronouncement: Ash cannot be subjected to more shock and hence nothing shocking should be told her. So only the fact that she has a mom is revealed to her (I swear, the scene had a solemn looking doctor telling Ash's mom "We have told your daughter with great difficulty that you are her mom. We cannot tell her anything else.") while the fact that she has a kid and that she is a widow is conveniently not told to her.

In the mean time, Arjun and Paresh Rawal are suffering big-time guilt pangs.You would think that Arjun would be doing his suffering in jail for man-slaughter. But apparently this accident took place in a world without cops and Arjun suffers only conscience pangs. Well, the father-son duo come up with the idea that Ash requires a change of scene to recover (hmm, did I not say earlier that she had loss of memory? So even the place she is in currently shd be a change of scene for her right? Oh well!) and so, since all other locations have become too commonplace in Bollywood, off to South Africa they fly.

Now the presence of the kid is explained to Ash by stating that it is Arjun's kid! And that Arjun's wife died in some accident. So Ash starts looking after the kid. Then she also starts slowly falling in love with Arjun. In between all these hapenings, Ash, her mom and Arjun go to a fair. There they meet one of those future-reading gypsies. In a scene which is apparently supposed to rend your heart, Ash tells the gypsy "Everyone comes to ask you about their futures. But poor sad me has come to ask you about my past" and utters a sob. Dear Ash, when I want to know about my past, I usually ask my mother. Why don't you also try asking your mom, who incidentally is with you all the time? Maybe losing her memory also took away her common sense.

So, well, Ash falls more and more in love with Arjun and Arjun cannot accept her as he feels guilty. Ash's mom also does not approve of her daughter marrying a murderer (smart mom). Then comes the next heart-rending moment. Paresh Rawal sends two boxes to Ash's mom stating that she must choose one future for her daughter. One contains a red bridal saree and the other *thunder-claps in the background* a white widow's saree. The mom looks at them and thinks that it is better for Ash to marry murderer Arjun than remain a widow. Ahem, did all unmarried men in the world other than Arjun die? Well, apparently in this movie's world they died and so Ash's mom accepts the idea of Ash marrying Arjun.

But Arjun still feels guilty. After a series of events, which finally culminates in the entire cast standing at the top of a mountain, Arjun reveals to Ash that she was married, that his kid is actually her kid and that he killed her former husband. What does Ash do? Scream? Slap Arjun? Swear to never see him again? Kill him? No! Instead she utters the best dialogue to ever make it to the movie-dialogues Hall of Fame "Oh, my husband was meant to die at that time. If you hadnt killed him, he would have anyway died some other way. Its not your fault." and accepts him!!!! Duh!! And thus ended the movie.

To say we were speechless at this last pearl of wisdom would be an understatement. Actually we were too busy rolling on the floor with laughter to say anything. Finally one of my friends gasped, "Next they will throw the child over the mountain and tell 'oh, the child was meant to die at this time anyway. So does'nt matter that we threw it over the mountain.'" For a long time after seeing this movie we used this dialogue to justify any action which was questionable!

The one good thing about the movie was Arjun Rampal. He looked real good. So the girl-viewers at least got some value for money. However Ash was very annoying with a horrible fake smile. Towards the end of the movie, even our staunch-Ash-fan male friends were asking her to shut up whenever she smiled. I wonder how Vrinda Rai could have kept a straight face while penning those imbecilic dialogues. Or maybe they really sounded like great stuff to her. We will never know.

Final verdict? Watch *only* in the company of commenting friends!