Just this morning a learned “Swami” who claimed (and whose followers claimed, that he knew every human feeling that goes into making modern life what it is, a wild life going wilder with man going wild and changing into something more than man, even more than a robot, a dangerous doll whose feelings are adjusted with the help of a bunch of keys which is in the hands of some deadly men, and what a discovery! I was waiting for the learned “Swami” to say something about that glowing feeling man is blessed by God - love. He looked startled. He rubbed his right hand on his huge stomach and blinked for a few moments. He was stumped for a moment. He started and once he started he just went round in circles speaking about a feeling which he said was great love but was sounding like nothing like the kind of love that God created for man. The only sentence I could make sense was when he said, “Never break a heart.” It made sense because I firmly believe what he said and there were many others like me. The heart according to a young Pakistani poet had nothing to do with love, it was just “a kilo or half of flesh blood and bones”. He said love is a product of the mind and had nothing to do with the heart.

And that there was nothing spiritual or sublime about it. He was an anti-love poet. According to him everything about man is decided by the mind, even love. The debate, the discussions, the dilemmas, the discoveries, the distress, even the degeneration of love goes on but no one has been successful in finding the real meaning of what that great feeling, that nebulous feeling called love is. The anti-love poet said that the heart was just an organ which was essential for man to breathe. The day it stopped working everything about man stopped. “So where does the question of love growing deep in the heart come from?” he asked the audience sarcastically and there was silence all around.
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Another poet at the mushaira talked about the relationship between the dhadkan of a man’s dil and his explanation of it for hours till men started leaving in groups. Love had never bored them so much at any time. The confusion about love continues... And now to add to the interesting confusion come a whole group of filmmakers who have never stopped making films about love. Take any film whether it is about Tarzan or Majnu or Romeo or Juliet, it has something or the other to do with love.
Dharmesh Darshan, our own young brilliant director who made a name for himself with just one film Raja Hindustani has now come up with his own explanation of what he thinks love is all about.
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Dharmesh’s Dhadkan like the title itself means is about the beat of love. What is this beat of love? When does it bring two people together and make their hearts beat together almost? Do the beating of the two hearts together mean a feeling of love or just another action of the body? Have all the great lovers of the past succeeded in finding the true meaning of love? Have the lovers of today, the so-called hep lovers whose love is based around the hips and the lips rather than the heart and the soul decided once and for all that this and only this is the ultimate feeling called love? These are some of the questions Dharmesh has tried to answer in Ratan Jain’s Dhadkan being made under the banner of Venus. According to producer Ratan Jain Dhadkan is one of “the most lovable love films made in these times of action and hatred. It is all about love as it should be. Love without any other meaning than what love should be, a feeling of glorifying human relationships”.
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Dhadkan according to producer Ratan who says he loves making films about love, romance and music is very clear that he is not making a love story which makes no sense, a love story which holds no meaning for today’s generation. In Dhadkan we have two lovers who are in their ’30s, Akshay Kumar and Sunil Shetty and both of them are generally known as action heros, “the real action heros of Hindi films”. How Dharmesh changes these action heros into two of the greatest lovers seen in Hindi films in recent times is what Dhadkan is all about. Dhadkan also has girls who are full of youth and beauty, girls like Shilpa Shetty and Mahima Chaudhury. The difference in age between the lovers is Dharmesh’s way of saying that nothing matters in love as long as love is love. “This is not one of the hundreds of love stories rolling out of the love story manufacturing factories, this is a love story which is made from the heart, for the hearts for entertainment and enlightenment for one and all,” says Dharmesh Darshan. According to Dharmesh Dhadkan is not a money-making tamasha but a mission for him. “I am here in this great industry to make films that will drill sense into my people through entertainment and if you ask me I think entertainment, genuine entertainment has played a very important part in instilling sensitivity and sensibility in the audience,” Dharmesh says and adds, “I have taken all the pain and I have made my team take all the pain to make a film that we will never regret about later. Dhadkan is not just a film, I repeat again and again. It is one big effort of one big team to enlighten and entertain as many people as possible.

My producer is sure our sincere efforts will succeed. I too am an optimist but I leave more of the film’s success to God and the people who are going to see my film soon. Till then I can feel the rhythm of my heartbeats take a different twist every now and then. Just a few days more and the great people of India will pass judgement and make a big difference to our heartbeats and I hope our film helps in making their heartbeats beat better.”
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And if it is Venus music has to be a very crucial part of their films. “And moreover, I, as a director, firmly believe that the film, especially a Hindi film, deserves all the best songs that it can get from its music director and lyricist.
Venus has always gone in for good music and this time with a title like Dhadkan and a story which is a love story the music has to be superb,”Dharmesh says.
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Nadeem and Shravan have come together after a long time under strange circumstances and together with Sameer, their partner, have given us just the kind of music that a story like Dhadkan needs. Ratan encourages his unit by telling us about how much the music is being appreciated all over. They hope he has the same to say about the film in the days to come.

Ali Peter John

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