What's your movie like?

Today I was missing a friend rather badly.

And when I miss my friends, I listen to their favourite songs on loop. Even if I don't like the songs myself. It makes me feel close to them.

So I played this song from the movie 'Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin':

Tu pyaar hai kisi aur ka
Tujhe chahta koi aur hai
Tu pasand hai kisi aur ki
Tujhe maangta koi aur hai

Loosely translated:

"You are someone else's love
Someone else wants you.
You're someone else's choice
Someone else asks for you."

After I had heard the song like ten times, I remembered its picturisation. It's a party scene. Aamir Khan is singing this song of lost love for Pooja Bhatt who's dancing in the arms of some random guy. And I started thinking of them one by one.

About what the movie means to each of the three characters in the song.

Aamir Khan - "This story is about me. I am the leading man. I am in love with this girl Pooja. I am trying to fight off random guy and win my lady love."

Pooja Bhatt - "This story is about me. I am the leading lady. I am in love with this guy Aamir. I am marrying random guy but I don't want to. I want to marry Aamir."

Random guy - "This story is about me. I am the leading man. I am in love with this girl Pooja. Random guy Aamir Khan is trying to take my lady love away from me."

That set me thinking.

Each of our lives is a movie. We write it ourselves, we set the direction, we pick the lighting, costumes, songs. We choose the characters we want in our movies, we choose how much screen time we want to give these characters. Along the way, we may even change the screenplay, and realise the potential of some of the actors and give them better roles. We may even 'kill off' some characters whom we don't want in the movie of our life. Some of them may magically come back into our movie if we want. Sometimes we even look around at other movies, and get inspiration from award-winning movie-makers, and turn the course of our own movies. The shooting of this movie goes on forever, and changes at every step.

But the most important thing that does not change is that each movie-maker picks himself/herself to play the lead in his/her movie. No matter what the genre is, no matter what the story is, no matter how the movie begins and ends, we are the focal points around which our movies revolve. Sometimes it may not seem so, but in the end, it is always about us.

There may be random guys in our story like the one in the song above. Spot boys. Extras. Make-up artists. And because we play the lead, they are insignificant. See that spot boy over that? He's there somewhere in your movie. He doesn't make much of a difference, and his work can be done by any of the millions of other spot boys you have. Random guy actually.

However, in his story, the spot boy is probably you. Or you could be the extra. Or the junior make-up artist. Basically, you are 'the random guy'. Because he chose you to be so. And there's nothing you can do about it, you can't ask for the lead role.

It's his movie, you see.

Sometimes, our movies overlap, the characters overlap. They cross paths, but they are all playing different roles in each of the movies at the same time. Playing the leading guy in their own, and playing the random guy in others'.

So that kinda balances everything out, doesn't it? You can make your movie as great as you want, and pick the best to play the roles you want them to play, but your role in others' movies is confined to what they want you to play.

But the best part is -- no matter what the box-office results say, no matter how heartless the critics are, no matter how bad the reviews are, no matter how much you think your movie sucks, someone somewhere, is watching it.