DDLJ Made By Anurag Kashyap, Ram Gopal Varma and Park Chan Wook

What if Anurag Kashyap or Ram Gopal Varma had made ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’? Read their versions right here.

Those who cherish their youth are in for a mild shock – today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. It’s been 20 years since the film turned everyone into a crazy Shah Rukh Khan fan and ingrained itself into our pop culture.

The perfect casting, the amazing songs and the Swiss locales definitely added to the film but it was Aditya Chopra’s heartfelt, sure handed direction that turned DDLJ into more of a special occasion than a movie. The final scene with Simran running on the platform towards Raj’s outstretched hand, with Amrish Puri making a thumbs up sign is as romantic and memorable as cinema can get.

But what if other directors had taken a shot at DDLJ? Below are three scenarios:

DDLJ By the Man Who Gave Us Dev.D, Gangs Of Wasseypur

• Raj is an alcoholic loner, occasionally abusing drugs to get over the trauma of losing his mother in his childhood. His father (Anupam Kher) is permanently disappointed in him, calling him the son he never wishes he had.
• Amrish Puri is a pawnshop owner somewhere in a poor London ghetto, struggling to make ends meet and nursing his bruised ego by lying to his family at home that he’s a rich NRI businessman. His wife (Farida Jalal) is a maid at a diplomat’s house.
• His beautiful daughter Simran is a Fine Arts college student in London who moonlights as an exotic hooker to pay for her college tuition. She falls in love with her new night client, Raj.
• But when her tragic father realises that the business is falling apart and discovers that Simran is a hooker, he begs Simran for something she can’t refuse: that they all go back to India, where he can join his childhood friend’s business with honour, and she get married to the new business partner’s honourable son.
• Simran has to now choose between passionate drug fuelled love for Raj, and fulfilling her tragic father’s wish to end their terrible lives in a foreign country and go back home and get married to a well to do, nice clean guy. She leaves for India.
• Raj infiltrates Simran’s house in Punjab as the guy who can provide cocaine to Simran’s fiancée Parmeet Sethi. After multiple failed attempts, in the end Raj gets high, makes a massive embarrassment of himself at the shaadi, and gets his ass kicked by Sethi.
• Seeing Raj in such an ugly avatar, Simran realizes it’s better to be with Sethi and the wedding takes place as scheduled. Raj sits alone in the sunflower field, overdosing on coke and bleeding through his nose on a yellow sunflower as end credits roll.

DDLJ By the Man Who Now Specializes in Sleaze and Horror

• The film is shot with a GoPro. Simran wears scanty clothes for no reason. The camera often lingers around her thighs. ‘Mere khwaabon Mein Jo Aaye...’ is a soft porno sequence where Simran dreams about a guy in a gym bod.
• Raj is an extremely muscular plumber who turns up at Simran’s home to unclog her pipes. She tells him her father wants her to marry someone who doesn’t have big enough tools.
• Raj then proceeds using his tools to clean her pipes, as something under the bed makes a noise. Raj and Simran are scared, they look under the bed and see the horrifying ghost of a woman.
• It turns out that the ghost is the spirit of Himani Shivpuri as Aunt Kammo who committed suicide by hanging herself using a new saree that she’d bought at a wedding that had been called off.
• Raj and Simran call a tantrik home who advises them that the only way to ward off the spirit is if Raj cleans her pipes.
• The final sequence, in night vision, shows Raj in passionate throngs on the bed with the invisible spirit of Aunt Kammo. The next morning a random black cat crosses the road, and looks at the camera as end credits roll.

DDLJ By the Man Who Gave Us Old Boy, Stoker

• Raj and Simran are both patients at a mental asylum in Korea. They meet each other at the water fountain every morning. They fall in love when they simultaneously try to drink the water and their lips touch.
• As they get closer they get to know why they were sent to the asylum: Simran had murdered a guy her father had forced her to marry. Raj, who had been working in a large Chaebol technological company was mentally exhausted by the famously torturous working hours typical of Korean tech companies. One day when the boss berated him in front of everyone he put the boss’ hand in the conveyor belt, and a large shipment of smartphones were manufactured that contain bits of the boss’ skin.
• Raj and Simran are increasingly drawn towards each others’ idiosyncrasies. There is love in madness, and madness in love. Their relationship is cutely disturbing. Simran would die for Raj, and Raj would kill for Simran. They realize murder is the element that brought them together, so they begin escaping the asylum every night to kill people, in a process to profess their love for one another.
• But when Simran’s father visits her one day, and he gets an inkling of their murderous romance, he alerts the cops and orders the asylum to let her go so he can take her away from him.
• Knowing that her dad is onto them, Raj and Simran escape from the asylum that night to run away for good. They wait for the train to Busan at dawn. The police show up and nab Simran.
• Raj escapes and gets aboard the train, Simran escapes her father’s clutches and run towards Raj who stands at the train door with his hand outstretched. Their hands meet, he grabs her. But the train is too fast, their hands slip and they tumble under the moving train. Once the train moves away the cops discover two mangled corpses permanently squashed and mashed into each other.