A fan’s love

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Is there anything philosophically grander than the seemingly trivial court case?

The Supreme Court has commanded Yash Raj Films to pay Rs 15,000 to Atifa Zaidi, because their film Fan did not feature the hit song Jabra Fan used in promos. Zaidi's kids, disappointed, refused to eat, became acidic and had to be hospitalised.

YRF contended that Zaidi was not actually a consumer of their services, as they are a production house; as if they are technical suppliers, not filmmakers who want us to consume and love their films. Jhoot bole judge daante, thank god.

Fan love is truth-love, pure love - because its purpose is simply to exist, to adore the idol. Through the deep pleasures of this dil ka rishta, fans tap into their own libidinal and emotional truths. I wake almost every morning to a DM about Shah Rukh Khan - sometimes it's someone sharing a dream they had of him, sometimes it's a video, sometimes a letter saying thank you for sharing your love, it made me accept mine. Fan love circulates powerfully, creating new worlds, new markets, new relationalities and new ways of being. It is creative, generative and open-ended. It has no practical application and is willing to go to new places, politically and emotionally risky.

But popular Hindi movies, and much of popular art is increasingly hollowed out, because it does little to feed that love and grow it. It keeps converting it into a practical application, manipulating that love through various gimmicks sometimes called algorithms, instrumentalising love for profits alone. What do you call someone who beckons you close with a dream, then reveals it was mere manipulation, yaniki "sorry if you got the wrong idea?" Cheater? Traitor? Politician? Fuckboi? Marketing and PR?

YRF responded with: it's a routine practice. Everyone does it. That's true. Movie promos, dating app profiles, job applications - we're told to fake it till we make it. We are supposed to accept dishonourablity in the name of pragmatism. People scoff at you if you want more than the simulation of intelligence, love, friendship, goodness, political commitment, as if they are cool and you are a fool because of this. These qualities exist in the intangible domain, a domain which is increasingly undermined in our times.

Lip sync songs with their overflowing emotions, desires, silliness, anguish and fire were among the things that gave expression to our intangible truths, and their disappearance is an example of how these intangible realms are made shadow. The fact that Fan went one step further and divorced the film and the promo with a song seems like a poetic injustice indeed.

The online opinionati were quick to mock this story. Folks who mock people like Zaidi, are often committed to the idea of ‘realism' yaniki literalism, a cynical belief system that tells us that only what can be seen is rational truth, and intangible, unseen truths are ‘absurd'. With that attitude what you get is all mann ki baat and no mann ki ankhein. You get loneliness. Because if no implicit truth must be believed, then all relationships are legal contracts, and where's the clause for love and ethics?

Some may call the person who protests this a fool, but it is the Fool's errands of radical love, that question the power of the status quo. Yaniki, I'm with Ms Zaidi.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com