We are often told that our favorite films are the ones that take us somewhere else—to a galaxy far away, a time long past, or a world of impossible heroism. But my favorite film, Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, is not a getaway. It is a mirror. It is a place I go when I need to remember exactly who I was, where I faltered, and how I finally learned to stand on my own two feet.
To anyone else, it might look like a simple, charming 90s Bollywood musical. To me, it is the story of my own coming-of-age—the story of a boy who felt consistently, painfully "lesser," and the man he had to become to survive his own shadows.
The Weight of a Legacy Not My Own
The film centers on Sunil, a character who is often dismissed as a dreamer, a liar, or a screw-up. But when I watch Sunil, I don’t see a screw-up. I see my younger self.
I grew up in the shadow of a dream that didn't belong to me. My father was a man of immense integrity and intellect, an electrical engineer who had been denied his own potential by the cruel constraints of money and circumstance. Naturally, he poured that unfulfilled ambition into me. He wanted the degree he couldn't have. He wanted the success that had eluded him.
But I was not the student he needed me to be. I remember the paralyzing fear of those years. I was supposed to be destined for the heights of an IIT education, a path I wasn't equipped for, yet I was terrified to say "no." I failed two years of engineering. I still remember the absolute, suffocating shame of that period. It was a time of internal collapse. In a moment of weakness—a moment that felt like the end of the world—I even went so far as to create a fake mark sheet. It was a desperate act of preservation, a way to keep the peace, a way to hide the truth from a father whose disappointment was a physical weight in the house.
Watching Sunil manipulate his own circumstances in the film feels like watching a recording of my own youth. The anxiety, the lies, the feeling that you are constantly juggling glass balls while the world waits for you to drop them—it was all there. I wasn't trying to be malicious; I was just a boy drowning, trying to keep my head above water in a sea of expectations I never asked for.
The Calculus of Failure
Mathematics was my first love. In tenth grade, I secured 148 out of 150. It was the one place where I felt confident, the one place where the numbers made sense and I didn't have to be "someone else." And yet, even that felt like it vanished when I entered the rigors of higher engineering. I couldn't cope. The harder I tried to force the outcome, the further I drifted from the results.
The turning point didn't come from a sudden stroke of genius or a change in environment. It came from the realization that my failures were not intellectual—they were emotional. I had been living in a constant state of panic, paralyzed by the fear of being "not enough." Once I acknowledged that I was fighting an internal battle rather than an academic one, the landscape changed.
I eventually passed my engineering degree with distinction. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. But the habit of feeling "lesser" didn't disappear with the diploma. It became the engine of my professional life. For years, I treated my career like a catch-up game. I worked harder, learned deeper, and pushed further, driven by that lingering, quiet voice from my youth that whispered, You are behind. You need to run faster.
The Quiet Armor of Control
In Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, Sunil is famously impulsive and chaotic. He misses his marks, he lets his band down, he drifts. I am the opposite.
I am never late. Not for a meeting, not for a friend’s dinner, not for a commitment. I am always the first one there. People might see it as just being organized, but it is actually a form of armor. If I am early, I am in control. If I am ready, I cannot be caught off guard. It is my way of ensuring that I am never again the boy who is "behind." It is my way of asserting that while I may have been late to find my footing in life, I will never again be late for the life I have earned.
The Lessons of the Heart
Sunil’s pursuit of love is the most painful part of the film to watch, because it is the most honest. Like him, I have had chapters in my life where I held on to things I should have let go. I have been in positions where I convinced myself that if I just tried hard enough, if I just showed enough passion, I could change the outcome. I have made choices in the name of "love" that, looking back, were born more from my own insecurities than from a genuine connection.
Like Sunil, I have walked roads that led to dead ends, and like him, I have made mistakes that I still cringe to remember. But there is a strange grace in those errors. Watching Sunil struggle and lose taught me that failure is not a terminal condition. You can be the "wrong" guy, you can lose the things you thought you wanted, and the sun will still rise tomorrow.
The Man I Am Today
I am no longer that boy with the fake mark sheet. I am an engineer, a professional, a husband, and a father. I have built a career in the demanding world of MV infrastructure, navigating technical complexities that would have terrified my younger self.
My father’s disappointment, which once felt like a life sentence, eventually evolved into a complex, unspoken understanding. I carry the memory of those days, not as a weight anymore, but as a compass. They remind me to be kind to the people who are struggling, and they remind me that "talent" is often just another word for "persistence."
I love Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa because it tells the truth about the middle of the road. It isn't a story for the golden child or the born winner. It is a story for those of us who had to learn the hard way, who had to build ourselves from the fragments of our own mistakes. It is for those who were "not bright enough" until they realized that the only person they had to outrun was the version of themselves they left behind.
And today, when I look in the mirror, I don't see the boy who was failing. I see a man who showed up, who did the work, who made the mistakes, and who survived them all. I see someone who knows that sometimes "No" is the most important word you can hear, because it clears the path to the only "Yes" that really matters: the one you give to yourself.
