5 Valuable Life Lessons Imtiaz Ali's Love Aaj Kal Has Taught Us

After the ground-breaking success of Jab We Met, expectations were quite high from writer-director Imtiaz Ali.

And why not?

With Jab We Met, the filmmaker had proved that romance films didn't need to be about song-and-dance and melodrama. That the characters didn't need to overcome unsurmountable odds, stand against the entire world or even appear irresistible to each other. He proved that characters in such tales can look, sound and feel... normal.

His next film Love Aaj Kal continued that trend. Yes, the film wasn't as well put together a film as Jab We Met was. But the film's honest exploration about what it means to love in the modern times makes it an essential piece of cinema.

Also, like all Imtiaz Ali films, the film taught us a great deal:

Lesson #1 Careers are important... only up to a point.

In the film, Saif wants to contruct bridges in San Francisco, while Deepika's character Meera wants to restore buildings in parts of India. For these dream jobs, they part ways. Yet, they are unhappy because to pursue their careers, they have given up on other important stuff.

Lesson #2 Sometimes all the logic in the world can't save you from a world of hurt.

We give up on things almost daily. We usually take these decisions based on sense and logic. But sometimes, all the pragmatism only hurts you as you end up giving up on things based on fear. And a life lived under fear can cause a lot of harm.

Lesson #3 Just because the new generation knows more, doesn't mean it is smarter.

Rishi Kapoor's old Veer Singh teaches Saif Ali Khan's modern Jai a valuable lesson in the end: when you love something, it is impossible that feeling would escape. So better take charge and follow your heart. 

Lesson #4 Love hasn't gone anywhere, only definitions have changed.

Told in two separate, the movie shows perfectly the cyncism and complexity involved in love-stories in our time. Not that there weren't any complications in gone-by generations, it's just that in our time love is only more difficult to identify given all the distractions and fast-paced nature of our lives. But beneath all that, our passion towards something or someone remains the same.

Lesson#5 Sometimes you just let go of everything and just break into dance. (A lesson given to us by almost all Bollywood films really).

Read more: 5 Important Life Lessons Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara Taught Us