Why the world loves doomed lovers...

The element of mystique and lingering pathos that surrounds lovers who were separated, makes for the best love stories, says Indrani Rajkhowa Banerjee...
Ok, given a choice, what would you want to know ��� why and how Abhishek and Ash fell in love and got married or why and how Abhishek and Karishma���s love went awry?
If you go by the records, the answer is simple! Raj-Nargis, Amitabh-Rekha, Marilyn-JFK, Guru Dutt-Waheeda Rehman, Dev Anand-Suraiya, Nehru-Edwina...all doomed lovers, their love has been immortalised because they were never united. The mystery of ���if they would have been together...��� continues to stoke the fires of imagination, even decades after most of them are dead and gone. Or else there���s no reason why Imran Khan making love to a young Benazir Bhutto as a student in UK still hogs media space.
What is it about star-crossed lovers that never fails to fuel popular imagination? Year after year, our eyes look out for a glimpse of the enigmatic Rekha as Amitabh takes on to the stage at every award function. As actor Shammi Kapoor, who grew up watching the Raj-Nargis saga unfolding, puts it, ���Doomed lovers, especially at an iconic level inspired many writers, painters and directors. Everyone loves a good tragedy. The Raj-Nargis romance, on-screen, was typically conveyed by two lovers looking into each others��� eyes, experiencing the agony, moving closer and then moving apart. In real life too, they were tormented souls!���
RJ Sachin is flustered at the number of requests he receives daily for Tum Bin���s title track and Bepanah pyar hai, aaja... ���I get very few requests for ���happy��� songs; ���bichadna��� is a word most listeners relate to. Songs from the classic Aandhi, where protagonists Sanjeev Kumar and Suchitra Sen fall in love, get together, separate, and meet again, are eternal favourites.���
But can today���s love stories, when they run into a cul-de-sac, inspire an entire generation of poets or writers? Durjoy Datta, author of Of Course I Love You... Till I Find Someone Better says, ���The era of iconic lovers is over.
The Twitter and YouTube generation believes in relationships, not love. With commercialisation, the concept of love is changing, every celeb reveals details of his love life.��� We knew that Kangana and Adhyayan would split after their movie together; as would Shahid and Priyanka! There���s no element of enigma nor do modern-day couples have a mysterious aura around them. When it comes to iconic star-crossed couples, many things remain unsaid. Imran Khan still prefers maintaining a gentlemanly silence on his ���affair��� with Benazir. Amitabh would politely say, ���next question, please��� when asked about Rekha.
���Dignity,��� says psychologist Jitendra Nagpal, ���was the mainstay in relationships of yesteryears. The gentlemanly code demanded that a man save his woman���s honour. The whole value of pain and endurance, and the degree of acceptance one goes through, propels these icons to transcend the mundane.��� Imagine what these ���immortal��� lovers would say of the emotional gore dished out in Sach Ka Saamna! Nagpal adds, ���These lovers didn���t follow the culture of revelations, which questioned the survival of a relationship. There was no vilification of their love, lies and betrayal. As victims of circumstances, they became symbolic of complete love.���
Today love itself is like an ostrich, digging its head deep in commercialisation, but every now and then, it raises its head, in the form of a spark in two lovers falling in forbidden love, intensifying the mystery element. And that���s when the magic happens, all over again...