A lilting melody filling up the lush valley, soft breeze blowing the pallu of a chiffon saree, and Sonu Nigam’s soulful voice tugging at your heartstrings evoking the nostalgia of a quintessential Bollywood romance— the Pardesiya track from the upcoming movie, Param Sundari starring Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor, that reminded me of the AR Rahman compositions in movies like Saathiya and Roja, is everything my parched ears, eyes, and heart needed. I am a sucker for the froth and the mush. If your hair is not flying softly in the wind when run towards your man in slow motion and if he doesn’t have his arms open with his body bent in an obtuse angle waiting for you without moving an inch, then what is the point even? 

For us, who grew up in the ’90s, Bollywood was synonymous to ‘romance’—romantic drama, romantic comedy, romantic tragedy, romantic thriller, romantic romance…romance was served with a variety of fillings (or should we say ...feelings). It was the soft boy era of the Khans and Aamir, Shah Rukh, Salman were each establishing their versions of the romantic hero—the common factor being all would make us girls go weak in the knees. In fact, my childhood dream was to grow up and elope from a marriage—thanks to Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin, I was sure that a state transport bus to Bangalore was the ideal and only place to find Aamir Khan (the other dream was to become a bus conductor, the reason was the same). When I reached my teens the bus to Bangalore started having stopovers at Swiss Alps where a slim and sexy version of me would be romancing Shah Rukh Khan in a chiffon saree (yes, when you have Aamir, Shah Rukh, and Salman to choose from, you can’t help but become ‘polyamorous’).

But over the years, especially post the rise of the dating apps, the idea of a sweeping romance slowly faded—from our lives, as well as from our cinema. Today, we are instead invested in decoding the newest infidelity trend as per the ever-updating GenZ love lexicon. The great Bollywood romance suffered a double whammy when post the pandemic, with the OTT revolution, cinema became ‘content’ and abruptly shifted gear from the ‘aspirational’ to the ‘realistic’. The slow-motion dream sequences gave way to Kitchen-sink realism of modern-day relationships replete with contemporary concerns and complexities. Love stories got replaced with stories of isolation, alienation, and disillusionment. There was suddenly no room left for romance, especially within the scope of heterosexual relationships. 

But now it seems after trying every woke trope and all kinds of derivative cinema, Bollywood is slowly easing back to the comfort of its quintessential romances. After a slew love stories like Metro... In Dino, Aap Jaisa Koi, Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan, and of course the blockbuster Saiyaara and the surprisingly hard-hitting Dhadak 2, next up is Param Sundari—the Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor rom-com is hitting the theatres this week.

While Vikrant Massey and Shanaya Kapoor’s Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan took the idea of blind love quite literally and then took it too far, R Madhavan and Fatima Sana Shaikh’s Aap Jaisa Koi leaned into the idea of opposites attract—the age-gap romance between two gorgeous actors unfolded in beautiful frames with the somewhat awkward chemistry between them adding a different charm. But what could have been a simple and soulful story of two individuals looking for old-school love in an age of dating apps was weighed down by its need to dole out sermons on patriarchy. It still makes for a good watch on a rain-soaked evening when you are pining for some romance. Follow it up with Metro... In Dino. Anurag Basu’s spiritual sequel to Life in a... Metro has four interconnected love stories—some work better than the others, but as a whole the movie captures modern love in ways that are relatable yet dipped in romance. Then came the love story that took the whole nation by storm. Saiyaara, starring the debutant Ahaan Pandey and Aneet Padda, brought Mohit Suri’s version of intense love stories overflowing with raw emotions and the OG YRF’s idea of a Bollywood romance together—and the result was a GenZ love story oozing passion and romance that set the box office on fire. Although Saiyaara was a hit nobody saw coming, it was Siddhant Chaturvedi and Triptii Dimri’s Dhadak 2 that really took me by surprise. Talking fearlessly about caste divide and caste-based violence, while staying within the scope of a love story, this Dharma movie directed by Shazia Iqbal is armed with honest performances and brave storytelling that refuses to soften the blows for the sake of easy viewing. It is also particularly heartening to see Karan Johar take into consideration the criticism that Dhadak had faced as an adaptation of Sairat and make amends. 

It is not only by far the best movie I have watched this year, but also the most poignant movie dealing with caste discrimination that has come out of Bollywood in the last decade (the only negative for me was the brownface). Here’s hoping that this marks the return of the great Bollywood romance. I can’t wait for Param Sundari to hit the theatres.  Let 2025 be the year of love, at least on screen!