How Tu Hai Meri Kiran became the Engineers’ Anthem
The Yash Chopra movie Darr was released on 29 October 1993, a few days after I entered Regional Engineering College (REC) Warangal. Shah Rukh Khan movies occupy a special place in the hearts of many like me, who did their engineering and lived in a hostel in the mid-90s. If I compiled a playlist of the songs that make me nostalgic, Tu Hai Meri Kiran from Darr would be right on top (followed by Tujhe Dekha To Hai Jaana Sanam from Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayange and Chura Ke Dil Mera from Main Khiladi Tu Anari). So what makes Darr and Tu Hai Meri Kiran special?
Darr was about the anti-hero, the good-looking guy who is madly in love with, but doesn’t win, the girl. Think of the social context of the engineering college: the boys outnumbered the girls 10: 1 (conservatively) and so the competition to win a girl was so stiff that getting into Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) or REC (now NIT, National Institute of Technology) seemed a cakewalk. Most boys failed in college romance — in my batch of 310 students, there were four couples who eventually married.
Once in college you were competing with the best — not just academically but socially and culturally too. The city bred guys (especially from Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad) gave the guys from small towns (I was from Bilaspur, MP) a complex; they spoke better English and wore better clothes. Some had more pocket money too and so could afford to take the girls out more often. Many of the small-town guys came from non-English speaking schools and often spent more time learning English than the subjects! And so, most guys could relate to SRK from Darr. They fervently believed that they were as good looking as SRK, that their crushes were as gorgeous as Juhi Chawla, and that every class had a Sunny Deol whom they would lose their crushes to. Some of my friends watched Darr so often that they started stammering like SRK!
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayange (DDLJ) was released on 20 October 1995 and evoked similar passion. The belief that the underdog would eventually win against all odds made SRK so popular that even after 25 years, most of my generation cannot accept any other hero as a superstar. I remember bunking an exam to watch DDLJ. And we would watch it repeatedly, competing for the most number of times one had seen the movie!
Darr and DDLJ were collectively responsible for getting the grades of an entire generation of engineers down by at least 10%. I strongly believe that the time spent by boys, daydreaming of Juhi and Kajol romancing SRK in Darr and DDLJ respectively, was more than the time spent on some of our subjects. I bet if we did an analytics of our grades and overlapped them with the movie release dates of these two films, the true picture would emerge!
Another song that packed the TV room with the entire boy’s hostel was Shilpa Shetty and Akshay Kumar’s Chura Ke Dil Mere from Main Khiladi Tu Anari which was released on 23 September 1994. Shilpa Shetty was tall and lanky; wearing long boots and a short skirt in the song sequence, she set the room on fire — although it’s a much tamer outfit compared to the ones worn by screen sirens today (Nora Fatehi, for example)! But I would argue that Akshay Kumar, though he had a huge female fan following, was never as popular as SRK amongst the male students. And the reason is pretty simple — the engineers were too lazy to think of doing workouts and martial arts like Akshay. Also, he was too tall and good looking. SRK was more relatable: he was short, unconventional, a chain smoker, did not go to the gym and was street smart — an almost perfect representation of an engineer.
But those were the days with no internet, no laptops and hence no distractions; where Philips Top 10 on Wednesday 8pm and X-Files on weekends were the only means of free entertainment. For everything else, we had to share an auto with at least eight other friends and watch an evening show at Alankar Theatre for Rs 10. If we had money to spare we would share a meal at Hotel Ashoka. Scarcity teaches more than abundance ever can! When time hangs heavy on your hands you build stronger human bonds than if you’re constantly engaging with a device. We lived in an analog world with no online distractions and therefore we could plumb deep wells of thought and feeling. We made deep connections since we only had one another to talk to about anything and everything. We even connected intensely with stars on the silver screen — like SRK from Darr!
