Because, I am Sid

(Someone on Twitter asked me and a bunch of other guys to write a note on on-screen characters we could most relate to. Here is just a hurried attempt to do the same.) 


You remember Sid of Dil Chahta Hai? Akshaye Khanna played him. Now I am sure while messaging he writes proper sentences and never types lyk dis. How do I know? Because I am Sid. That is why. And the receding hairline is not even the sixth most significant similarity. And no, I can’t paint.

Let me do an exercise for you. Dil Chahta Hai was a cool movie, right? Probably the coolest ever made in Bollywood. Now who do you think was the coolest character in Dil Chahta Hai? Aakash? I will forgive you later for confusing juvenile with cool but did you notice the coolness with which he handles the fact that his friend is in love with a much older woman? Or is it Sameer? His being an ass and a relationship-sabotager went unnoticed just because Subodh was an even bigger ass. I didn’t know not being the biggest idiot in the town equated with being cool.

Well, do come back to me when you find an uncool act of Sid.

Maybe someday I will meet him and ask if he feels the same way as I do when he stands apart and looks at his urbane, chic friends attracting girls like moths to fire with their suave yet punkish sense of humor and wonder why in the seven hell are these guys his friends? What X-factor do they find in him when the best he can do is arch his eyebrows and twist his lips and say, “Tu kabhi nahi sudhrega na?”  Or maybe we will just look in each other’s eyes with the tacit allegation, “Remember Deepa? Your kandha act was so lame compared to mine. Farhan Akhtar suddenly hired Sameer to write your lines kya?” And he will just give me a blank look and go, “I wish your kandha act was from the era of silent films dude.” Tell him that sometimes I show people my funny, dark resignation letter which went viral in my last company or tell them that Gul Panag follows me on Twitter. Just like you walked Tara through your paintings. And tell him that like with you, it never worked.

There is something utterly relatable with someone who lets his friends screw-up. Like Sameer with Priya and that fraud firang in Goa. Someone who follows “I love privacy- be it mine or yours”. Someone who is ready to punch his friend because he basically infringed that line of the same.

Maybe we will hang out together. Probably at a bar, likelier at a barista. Maybe I will introduce him to my Akaash-es and my Sameers and mutter “kids these days” under our breaths.  Maybe we will compare our hairlines. But, mostly we will have fun together. People of our ilk do tend to like ourselves.