Soulmates of crisis: Cinema frames conflict as the language of romance, but what does it mean to love in a pandemic?

The Viewfinder is a fortnightly column by writer and critic Rahul Desai, that looks at films through a personal lens.

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Most of us grow up under the impression that crisis is the cornerstone of love. Childhood, for instance, is a collage of emergency positions. It is composed of constant upheavals of identity, body, morality and mind. This is when we develop the purest form of platonic attachment — towards our parents — because they nurture our sense of courage. They help us navigate years of intense conflict and change. This phase culminates in a lifelong bond that is neatly bookended by the role reversal of caregiving: the crisis of old age becomes the bedrock of memory. The emotional anatomy of a parent-child relationship is subconsciously adapted by storytellers as the language of romance. Film has long perpetuated the notion that danger is the prime provoker of passion.

There’s no better cupid than a sticky situation: Mix two strangers in a grinder and they exit as soulmates. Consider Titanic, where Jack and Rose unite in the face of societal prejudice and a sinking ship. Consider Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, where a travelling mishap enables the Raj-Simran legacy. Thanks to Kaho Naa...Pyaar Hai, I grew up assuming that if I were to find “the one,” we would have to be stranded on a scenic island together. Like Rohit and Sonia, our domestic compatibility would be tested under the guise of forced co-dependence: I’d cook, she’d hunt, I’d protect her face from the harsh glare of the sun, she’d turn the moon into my reading lamp. The reasoning is dramatic but not unfounded. Survival is the most intimate expression of human nature. Perhaps if we start off by experiencing each other at our most primal, the only way forward is up.

Over the last year, the crisis of a lifetime has throttled the life out of time. The pandemic has India suspended in a state of alternate reality. It’s the sort of scenario we would flippantly conceive as a fictional exam of our feelings: If a deadly virus eats through humankind tomorrow, would you come rescue me? If the country went under lockdown, would you be stuck with me? In all of 15 months, the trajectory of living has undergone irreversible course deviation. People who should have thrived have died. Families that should have evolved have evaporated. The celestial motion of loving, too, has been forced out of orbit. Most fates have lost shape. Partners have been left behind: Forever Lands have doubled up as tragic graves. People who were never meant to meet have found, loved and left each other. But some fates have been revised, too.

In early 2020, we said our goodbyes at an airport yet again. My partner and I had been in a long-distance relationship for a year. We took turns visiting each other’s cities — and therefore loved with the urgency of two dreamers discovering one another through farewells. We looked at each other in a hurry. The inevitability of separating had begun to hijack the anticipation of meeting. So it was decided: the next time we met would be the first time there would be no next time. The plan was for her to move to my city — the more feasible option — and stay in my apartment until she could afford her own. Her transfer had been approved. We were finally going to ‘feel’ on our own terms. I clicked a photograph of her waiting in line at the airport terminal, she clicked a photograph of me clicking a photograph of her. We waved. Our eyes smiled; for once, there were no tears. A month later, this moment would be a hopeful memory.

On a warm Sunday morning, she arrived at my doorstep. But we didn’t embrace so much as collapse in each other’s arms. Relief, not joy. Needing, not wanting. It had been eight months since our eyes smiled at the airport. In between, the first wave of a global pandemic had raged and raged until there was no light left to die. There were times we didn’t know if we would ever meet again, let alone execute a plan of sustained closeness. She was stranded on her own island, I was isolated on mine. There were tears and rage. The phone call had been on hold for so long that we had nearly forgotten the sound of each other’s voice.

Half a year later, my home has become her home. The city is eliminated from the equation: the Mumbai I sold to her is no longer the Mumbai she can savour. The beaches are shut, the spirit is masked and the air is heavy. “Moving in” then wasn’t a transitory phase so much as a singular solution. It was no longer a stepping stone into the future, but a passing milestone for a vehicle veering off the beaten track. Crisis may not have been the cornerstone of our love, but it has become the architect of our companionship. The heady attractions of the honeymoon phase have made way for the subdued affinity of partnership. But this partnership, like a million others at this moment, has an asterisk mark: Every action is underlined by the dread of losing rather than the appreciation of being.

Earlier, I would notice a little quirk — like the way she absent-mindedly reads her articles aloud while writing them — and cherish the mental picture of her preserving a school habit well into adulthood. Now the same quirk terrifies me: I suddenly imagine the silence in the room if something were to happen to her. I rely on the soft rumbling of her notes — or the throaty cheer of her video calls — to complete my own soundscape. I notice the way her eyes light up at the sight of a food delivery agent. But instead of downloading the moment into my memory drive like I once did, I now fret about how something as mundane as a takeaway is tinged with irrevocable affection. When we visited each other, she would take candid pictures of me in various states of inactivity, mostly to remind herself of the good times when the distance got too hard. She saved WhatsApp chats to remember the love that came before the story. Now she takes candid pictures of me engrossed in my laptop, likely to remind us of the calm we’ve earned after persevering through the storm. She has no chats to save anymore, so we often end up saving each other instead — to remember the story that emerged after the love.

In spite of striving towards a future of no goodbyes, the fear of farewells haunts every aspect of our bond today. She has a family to see, a childhood home to care for. In times like these, such visits can only be afforded the ambiguity of one-way tickets. Somewhere beyond looking in a hurry and loving like there’s no tomorrow, there is a field of limbo — we keep meeting there. We don’t hold each other anymore, we hold onto each other. The former signifies shelter in one another, the latter signals an escape into each other. I keep wondering: If two soulmates are mixed in a grinder, will they exit as strangers? I often think of a famous Indian film as the answer. The second half of Sairat features a young couple gradually morphing from lovers on the run to partners in the sun. The moment Archi and Parshya elope to a new setting, they begin to unlearn all the bravado that defined their union. Their love adopts the grammar of co-dependence. Perhaps it’s a necessary awakening. Crisis doesn’t bring them together, it reframes their vocabulary of togetherness. Danger doesn’t teach them how to leap, it educates them about the price of having leapt.

The days we argue, I think of where we might be in a normal universe. What if the timeline had never forked? As per plan, I wait at the airport with a corny placard flashing: Welcome Home. She is mortified. She stays with me for a month, we house-hunt for her. She moves into a shared apartment. We meet every evening. Her flatmates dislike me. We frequent all our favourite “spots” together — the fries at a pub, the croissant at a cafe, the walks at a promenade. We put her new passport to use, taking our first vacation together. She starts to explore the city on her own. But the office commute is a killer. She gets tired. We cancel a short trip because she’d rather spend the weekend in bed. Soon, we’re meeting twice a week. I ask her to move in with me. She thinks about it while visiting her parents. I immerse myself in work — the silence in my bedroom is nice. I order my favourite takeaway. The return ticket remains unbooked. The calls lessen. We scroll through old photo galleries. One night, a drunken text message is typed: If a deadly virus eats through humankind tomorrow, would you come to me?

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