Dil Se: Love, Fantasy and Negotiation in Hindi Film Songs

This essay deals with the semantic and semiotic field of dil (heart) in Hindi film songs. Dil, as one of the most recurring motifs in Hindi film songs, provides a layered and dynamic view into the way self and non-self are both constituted by and reflected in language. As a trope, dil draws from poetic traditions and metaphors of Persian and Urdu, frequently overlain by other conventions and idioms of love in South Asia. Besides locating the unspoken and spoken conventions of dil, we also underscore specific psychoanalytic meanings of “self” and argue that dil is the site both of desire and denial; an alternative but culturally acceptable possibility of romance and a transferred epithet under watchful eyes.