In Dino and Qayde Se from Anurag Basu’s Metro films are the soundtracks of my one-sided love story
Metro… In Dino is on Netflix. As is its spiritual prequel, Life in a… Metro. There’s a lot to nitpick in both films, but for the most part, I enjoyed watching them. The interconnected journeys, the ensemble cast, the blurry movement of life in a city, the loneliness in plain sight and the imperfect love stories—all worked for me in the messy and chaotic Anurag Basu way.
What I love most in both films is how they capture the passage of time as one waits for love. My favourite characters are Shivani, played by the stunning Nafisa Ali in the first film and Shibani, played by the brilliant Neena Gupta in the second (yes, the names are strikingly similar—one of Basu’s delightful easter eggs; you’ll also find Monty, Akash and Sruthi reappearing across his films). Both women part ways with the men they loved in their youth. But that does not chain them into immobility. They marry, raise families and nurture relationships for forty years without losing their tenderness. But their lives are absent. They don’t have the kind of liberation that only being madly in love can bring.
Shivani, once a dancer, lives in an old-age home. She is visited only by her student, Shikha (Shilpa Shetty), once a week. Shibani, meanwhile, shares a home with a husband to whom her presence has become so inconsequential that he drives off from a family celebration, not realising she isn’t in the car.
Both women reconnect with the men who loved and left them—Shivani with Amol, played by Dharmendra and Shibani with Parimal, played by Anupam Kher. The reunion reminds them what it means to matter to someone and feel alive again.
In the second Metro film, Shibani, while on a call with her daughters after a life-changing week, says: “Kaash aur agar ke beech me poori zindagi nikal gayi.” The line seeped into me. Haven’t we all lost ourselves between “what if” and “I wish”? I know I have.
Both films are full of these dialogues that linger. But it’s the songs that carry the weight of Basu’s storytelling. There’s hardly a day when I don’t lose myself in the giddy nostalgia of love and hope, listening to Phir Le Aaya Dil from Barfi, or even Aabaad, Barbaad from Ludo. The songs have the effect of transporting me to another world of hopeful second chances.
From the two Metros, two songs in particular have stayed with me. In Dino from the first film and Qayde Se from the second. It isn’t just their melodies. It’s how perfectly they capture something I’ve never been able to put into words. Pritam’s tunes are featherlight, but the lyrics cut deep.
Dil jala ke muskurane ki jo aadat hui hai mujhe
Lag raha hai qayde se, ab mohabbat hui hai mujhe
These Amitabh Bhattacharya lines from Qayde Se have been in my ears since July. Dil jala ke muskurana is what love has always felt like to me.
Giving without measure. That’s the only kind of loving I know how to do. But I’ve never had it returned to me. Not in the way I’d hoped, anyway. Still, I linger. Not the usual kind of lingering most people consider “normal.” I’ve pined and whined for years. Frankly, I’ve always struggled to explain—even to those that care for me deeply—why I can’t move on. But Qayde Se gets it.
“I’ve made a habit of smiling with a burnt heart,” the song says. “And now, as if by a rule, it feels like I’m in love.” It is both a confession and a curse.
The hurt I’ve experienced with love wasn’t triggered by a storm of words. Rather, it was their absence. That’s the cruelty of loving someone who will never love you back. There are no fights or thunderous confrontations to give you the satisfaction of closure. There is nothing.
Meri tumhi se hai jawabdari, naraazgi bhi dher saari
Tumhein harane ki zid mein, ye zindagi tumhee se haari
Giving is easy when love is still becoming. It’s an emotional investment in a beautiful fantasy. Giving is easier when love is reciprocated. It’s validating and liberating to know your investment paid off. But when love is unreturned, its weight is unbearable. It feels like losing a game you never wanted to win.
I lost too.
When it happened, I had to carry not only the sting of rejection but also the loss of agency. My power to give love freely slipped away and I was left with a lump of confusion in my heart. I was hurt. I was alone. I was angry.
But, despite this hurt, I returned to love in all its unrequited glory and to the person who couldn’t return it. I don’t know if it was habit or helplessness, but I kept in touch, I smiled, I laughed, I joked…and I continued to give.
Why did I do that? Why do I still? Why does anyone?
Shivani from the first Metro holds part of the answer. She says: “Pyaar kabhi bataa ke toh nahi aata. Na saalon se gina jaata hai, na sindhoor se pehchana jaata hai. Uski pehchaan hai uski khusboo, isi liye dil ki kidhki hamesha khuli rakhni chahiye.” Love never announces itself, she says. Its identity is not in the years that have gone by or the constraints of marriage. It is in the scent it leaves behind. So we must keep the windows of our hearts open.
The dialogue comes right before In Dino, my favourite song in the film. Shivani and Amol have begun to “date” each other after four decades of separation. He is sick. She is widowed. They don’t know how much time they have together. Logically, they shouldn’t complicate things further. But they can’t help but fall in love again. She has no resentment, no hate. She’s just excited to have another shot at love. He has no grand dreams or expectations. He simply wants to spend what little time he has left with the only person he ever loved.
Although her constraints are different, this same grace in the face of lost time appears in Shibani’s story in the second Metro. She meets Parimal, a widower, after forty years at a college reunion. The ticking time bomb here is not an ailment, but that she has to return to Pune, to her home and her husband, after the weekend. When she’s about to leave, Parimal, despite himself, comes to visit her. They sit on a bench overlooking the city and attempt to catch up on the lives they’ve led without each other.
When he reminds her that it’s time for her to leave, she asks: “Iss baar bhi nahi rokoge mujhe?” Here, too, there is no resentment. Only wonder. Only hope. Parimal tells her that there is no point in stopping her because nothing is the same. Neither the city that bore their love nor their youth that enabled it. “Umar toh bas ek ginati hai, Parimal,” she responds, “Aaj ke liye tum ginati bhool jana aur aaj ke liye main flight bhool jaaungi.” She stays back to reconnect with her city, her love and her old self.
To want and be wanted is to be human. And perhaps, to love (even in disappointment) is proof of being alive. As is the instinct to hope and dream stubbornly. When there is hope, the lines between ‘kaash’ and ‘agar’ wear thin. There is no escape. No giving up. There can’t be.
Sayeed Quadri’s lyrics in In Dino capture this hope piercingly. In a way, Qayde Se and In Dino are a package duo. While Bhattacharya in the first song captures the curse of loving, Quadri’s words from In Dino tempt us to do it anyway.
In dino dil mera, mujhse hai keh raha
Tu khwaab sajaa, tu jee le zara
Hai tujhe bhi ijaazat, kar le tu bhi mohabbat
“These days, my heart is telling me: Dream and live a little. You, too, have permission, go and love a little.” The song wants you to love. It almost doesn’t care what will happen after it ends badly. In parts, it’s as if the song is daring me to be cruel to myself. It eggs me to return to the fire even when I know it will burn.
I listen to it on my auto ride to work. On most days, the chaos outside the auto mirrors the pounding in my heart as I lose myself in imaginary conversations and unlived moments. Somewhere between traffic signals and the honk of impatient scooters, when I hear the song refer to life without love as “colorless,” the enormity of my loneliness tugs on me.
Berang si hai badi zindagi, kuch rang to bharu
Main apni tanhayi ke vaaste, ab kuch toh karu
The lyrics make the greyness of my mornings demand a splash of red, even if it is momentary. It’s the kind of splash Amol brings to Shivani and Parimal brings to Shibani. It’s not permanent, but you savour it anyway because it is hard-earned. It has waited, sustained, forgiven, healed and liberated.
Love is a deliberate surrender to hurt. That’s clear. Self-preservation screams one thing; the heart demands another. There is no neat resolution in this tug-of-war, and any epiphanies about what matters most seem to come only when it’s too late. In a heartbreaking moment in the first Metro film, a regretful Amol says that “dil ke maamle mein, hamesha dil ki sun ni chahiye.” In matters of the heart, you must always listen to the heart. But by then, he is left only with a ‘kaash,’ imagining a life he could have built with Shivani, who isn’t there anymore. The only thing to do then is to linger in the regret of the in-betweens.
Sometimes I fear that the only love I will ever know is unrequited and that when it finally comes to me, it will be fleeting. I’m scared that I may be too old to embrace it or too tired to hold it. But other times, I am more optimistic. Maybe Shivani and Shibani are right: age is just a number. Maybe love can arrive late and still make me feel alive again…Even if for a moment.
So I will continue to keep the windows of my heart open. And if that day comes, I hope I can be kind to love and forgive it for making me wait. Because, as Qayde Se puts it:
Kya bataoo, dard leke…kitni raahat hui hai mujhe
Lag raha hai qayde se ab mohabbat hui hai mujhe
To the brilliant minds who write, compose and sing the songs that heal my broken heart.
If you’ve stuck with the column this far, know that it means everything to me. Thank you for reading!
Spandana is the writer of the column Frames and Flashes, a space that explores films through personal experiences and unfulfilled fantasies.
You made me want to go and listen to all these songs again and feel all the feelings. What a heartfelt and poignant read, Spandana!