Retrospect

 The other day, I was speaking with one of my friends, someone who's known me long enough to know me well - and told them that if there's a spirit character of mine, it has to be Geet from "Jab we met"

"Are you your favorite then?" the question came before I could blink. 

Except I went speechless. After a long pause came another question.

"Then why do you call her your spirit character?"

I didn't have an answer. I went into a thinking spiral and said "Yeah, I don't know why I identify with her the most of all the characters I watched"

The conversation drifted to other topics, Though My brain didn't. I wasn't sure why I thought Geet and I had the same spirt, albeit with surface differences. I am not as lively as her, and no I don't chat up random strangers and go on a talk marathon - but when I connect with someone, I have the tendencies to be a Geet.

Around 3am our time, the thought of "Why am I like Geet, if I am not like Geet" was on a loop in my nocturnal head. And then something happened.

I pulled up my phone, squinted in the dark. 

"Geet didn't love herself, she wasn't her favorite" I texted to my friend who resides in another time zone.

"Why so?" came the instant response with a surprise emoji in tow. 

And thus, triggered the subtext of what Imtiaz Ali would have meant when he morphed into Geet and made her say what she said. In the context of the dialogue, a morose Aditya is just warming up to the very extroverted  Geet. When she exclaims how she would have fallen for him, had she not been into a committed relationship and adds something in the lines of "Just imagine - me falling for you" Aditya says - "You love yourself don't you? and she responds in her characteristic enthusiasm saying "Main Apni Favorite hoon" - a tagline that probably launched a thousand memes, and that many more oohs and aahs, to a point where it arguably became the one liner that the film got identified with. 

So where did we miss the subtext bus with this line? What do people that love themselves do when they are faced with rejection? Do they become frail shadows of their former selves, forgetting to talk, smile or even think of the family that would coddle and comfort them in times of crisis? Then why did Geet say she is her favorite? Is it just an involuntary confirmation she offered to Aditya without meaning what she said? - quite possible right? 

The Geet that Aditya thought he saw would have done one of the following in the event of being dumped.

* Do a live session of the gaalis then and there, when Anshuman rejects her. 

* Move on, say nothing - just show her disappointment to him and return home by the next quickest transportation available , do a customary little grieving  if that and move on to her next adventure, with or without a guy on her arm. 

'That would not make the plot the plot' - you might argue. What if I said, it wasn't there for the plot but for real, and Geet didn't love herself all along! She was too vested into the world - She was concerned about the long face of a fellow traveller, she was bothered when someone she just met missed the train. She didn't shrug her shoulders and go on with her self love when Aditya didn't seem to be interested in her banter. Geet wore a mask of self love. For real, she had love for everyone and everything except herself. She needed another person to come pull her out of the slump of rejection. Geet didn't love herself. She didn't!

Imtiaz did put a little red herring in there, with that "Main apni favorite hoon" - it is probable that many givers like Geet are led to believe that they are indulging  in themselves when they give love. It is probably how the Geets of the world end up, in a slump when the love they project onto the world doesn't reflect back onto them. It is probably why the likes of me and many more identify with Geet though they don't gaslight themselves into believing that they are their own favorite. 

So what did Geet learn in the end? 

And as her spirit human, I aspire to learn it too!

 

Love is a superpower that saves the world. And when we give it all away and don't save even a little for ourselves, we render ourselves broke. We lose ourselves.

Let's be our favorites - all while saving the lost ones on the brim of giving up, while making sure others don't miss their trains. 

    Let's mean it while we say it!