20 years of Paheli: Shah Rukh Khan-Rani Mukerji starrer feminist, dreamlike love story has aged gloriously well

Indian Express

4 days ago

'Paheli' is a deeply fascinating title. It is deceptively simple, yet dense with suggestion. A word that breathes poetry into the everyday, that lives between the literal and the symbolic. It can be a riddle, yes, but also its resolution. It invites contemplation and still manages to offer closure. In the context of Amol Palekar's 2005 fantasy film, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji, the title becomes something else entirely. Many still argue that the film might have been better served by the title 'Duvidha,' the original 1973 film by Mani Kaul, which serves as inspiration for Palekar's 2005 rendition. But the truth is: 'Duvidha' as a word could never fit into what Palekar was trying to convey. After all, he wasn't telling the story of a ghost, but of love — ghostly in its own right, not dead, not alive, just endlessly recurrent.
Take the film's logline: Lachchi (Rani Mukerji) marries Kisanlal (Shah Rukh Khan), yet on their wedding night, Kisanlal refrains from consummating the union, revealing he must leave for five years on a business trip. But when he departs, a ghost, entranced by Lachchi's beauty, assumes Kisanlal's form. At first glance, one might expect a straightforward tale of mistaken identity. A story about a ghost (let's call him Prem), courting Lachchi, who soon discovers the truth. Yet Palekar (just like Kaul) subverts this expectation. When Prem first meets Lachchi, he does not conceal his nature; he confesses, openly, that he is a ghost impersonating her husband. He offers her freedom, to reject him and be left alone. Caught in a 'duvidha,' a dilemma, Lachchi hesitates. But the title 'Paheli' acquires a distinct meaning here, as she chooses not to unravel the mystery, not to seek an answer. Instead, she embraces the riddle. She lets herself be caught in the enigma of love, in its illusions. Because what is love, if not illusion? Sometimes, the illusion is the only truth that matters.
Then the film transforms into a vivid dream of love, alive with stirring songs, and a gentle, unfolding romance. And that is where Palekar departs from Kaul, not by disagreeing with him, but by dreaming differently. Kaul's Duvidha was about stillness. About the silence between two possibilities; Palekar's Paheli is movement. It flows, it dances, it breaks rules not to shock, but to soften. Perhaps the most striking departure is how Palekar envisions a feminist love story, grounded in women of agency, rooted in a small Rajasthani town. Consider the introduction of Shah Rukh's character: he remains out of focus, while Rani commands the foreground. This might appear a subtle choice, even trivial. Yet, the deliberate way a film composes its women on screen, how it centers the narrative around them, is a language unto itself. And here, those creative decisions speak volumes. They invite us to study not just the story, but the very politics of presence.
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The very fact that on her wedding night Lachchi chooses Prem, the ghost, is rooted in something profound: he alone asks for her consent. He offers her the gift of choice, the pleasure of agency. The film deliberately departs from the traditional cinematic portrayal of the 'suhaag raat,' where women are often shown as passive, or aching with restraint. In Paheli, Lachchi commands the moment. She tells her husband to lift her veil and is the one who desires to consummate the marriage. And it is the man, Kisanlal, who flees, cautioning that passion kindled for a single night is dangerous. This reversal is not only bold but grounded in cultural nuance. Brides, especially in traditional narratives, are framed as demure, hesitant, shy. Lachchi is neither. She embraces her desire openly. As desire, in her hands, becomes not transgression, but truth.
Watching Paheli now, two decades after its release, hints at the kind of cinema we claim to be striving for today. But there was Palekar, doing it already back then. He imagined a world where women support one another, where abandonment by men does not define their sorrow, only their freedom. Think of Laapataa Ladies, that same thread of camaraderie runs through Lachchi and her sister-in-law (Juhi Chawla). Their bond is not written with sentiment, but with solidarity. Even in the song 'Minnat Kare,' as Lachchi's friends tease her about the wedding night, there's a playful, subversive energy, one that feels like a precursor to 'Naram Kalija' from Amar Singh Chamkila. It's the same undercurrent: women laughing among themselves, not as objects of desire, but as subjects of their own stories.
What I also believe Paheli set in motion was Aditya Chopra's decision to make Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi a few years later. You can sense it, the way Palekar crafted Shah Rukh's lover persona, with such poetic restraint and emotional sophistication, seems to have inspired Chopra to create his own mythic duality in Surinder Sahni and Raj. Because at their heart, both films are not about the men, but about the women. About their longing, their desire, their rebellion. And SRK, as always, exists not to dominate those stories, but as the bridge, the embodiment of what they dare to dream. It's no accident, then, that in Paheli, when Kisanlal asks the ghost who he really is, Prem answers: 'Aurat ke dil mein jo prem ho, woh hoon main.' (I am the love that lives in a woman's heart.) No wonder, it's a scene where Shah Rukh speaks to himself, split into two bodies, two selves, inhabiting the myth of who he has always been on screen. Who said love is an illusion? As long as you have Shah Rukh Khan, it's the only truth that matters.