25 Years of DDLJ: Falling in Love with ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’

I still remember the first show, three of us schoolmates – two boys and a girl – bunking school and sitting in the second class seats of Shillong’s Payal Cinema (the tickets for the cheapest seats cost us Rs 40 each in black. The actual price back then was Rs 1.65). The release then was a rarity for Shillong – a film hitting the hill city’s screens on the same day as the rest of the country. We usually had to wait for a few months, by then half the city would have already watched it on video tapes. Huge posters of Kajol and Shah Rukh were plastered all over. “Come fall in love,” they said. When the film ended I told the my friend that I’ll come back for more.

Come back I did. As the shows went by I didn’t need to purchase tickets in black anymore and could enjoy the luxuries of the balcony (Rs 5.10) or the Dress Circle/’Payal Circle’ (Rs 6.10). During the winter vacations twice or thrice a week I ventured out alone to Payal Cinema and watched Raj romance Simran and win over everyone on and off the screen.