How ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ Gave Us Perspective

“Please take your happy-go-lucky nature and just go somewhere else,” an exasperated Naina Kapur (Preity Zinta) snaps at her new neighbor, Aman Mathur (Shah Rukh Khan), who has just arrived from India. Aman had invited himself over for dinner, charmed her mother, and was now laughing because of a mixup that sent her classmate Rohit (Saif Ali Khan) to the wrong house.

Suddenly, Aman stops joking. “What’s your problem?” he says. “For you, what you have is little. But if you look at your life through someone else’s eyes, you have a lot. Live. Be Happy. Who knows? What if tomorrow never happens?”

And such is the central thesis of Kal Ho Naa Ho, a 2003 Hindi film about a 23-year-old Indian American MBA student, Naina. Her family members hate each other, the family restaurant business is struggling to stay afloat, and her life is all gloom and doom. Enter Aman, an angel of a character who reminds us to look at the brighter side. He almost feels too good to be true — perhaps because he is.