If you know nothing about the ongoing Kabir Singh/Arjun Reddy controversy you probably have been living under a rock don’t follow the movies or gossip. My husband doesn’t either. I haven’t watched the movie myself but I read the thought pieces on Baradwaj Rangan’s blog as well as the discussions that followed and well, picked a side. Later, I watched this interview of director Sandeep Reddy Vanga. It’s a half hour interview but what appalled people the most were his views on love. Vanga thinks you cannot really be in love if you cannot hit your partner. It has to be unconditional in that sense.
This has not unnaturally upset a lot of people. Especially victims of domestic violence.
I strongly believe everyone has a right to their opinions and the right to express themselves. So here’s my opinion. Vanga (and the people who helped him rake in 250+ crores in the movie’s Hindi outing alone) might appreciate this intense and creepy style of love. For me, well, my favorite romance novel of all time is Georgette Heyer’s sparkling Cotillion*.
Cotillion headlines a young girl trying to win over her handsome, rake (romance novel leading man) of a crush by pretending to be engaged to someone else. That’s not very original so far and the template dictates that the book end with her staying on with her pretend fiance. But Cotillion is no Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam or Mouna Raagam. And Freddy (for that’s our hero’s name) is no mature, stabilizing rock for her to anchor to. He’s a bit of a wind blown sail himself. He is after all just a boy! His father though is someone who was probably a romantic hero once though his mother makes one wonder but let me not digress. Freddy’s dad is a great influence on him and so is Kitty. For completely different reasons. As they negotiate a London season, measles outbreaks, pregnant relatives, intrigues and elopements and some random weirdness together, they grow up. They learn to lean on each other and discover that the world makes more sense and is a funner, funnier place when they are in it together.
And that’s my idea of what love is and what love does. The closest they came to that in Hindi cinema is Rangeela which was also a great movie. One where the boy does not assume the girl has to love him back just because he does. Where he doesn’t resent her success. Where she is the star but he is not the stalker. The anti-Dhanush movie.
It says something about our society that that movie was nowhere like the monster hit Kabir Singh is turning out to be. I’m not sure what that is but something not very nice I think.
*I found this review of Cotillion which I liked because it called out probably my favourite passage** in the book. It also makes a mention of Freddy’s questionable sexuality which is in stark contrast to AR/KS’s toxic masculinity and defines a very different sort of leading man.
**Actually, I cannot resist quoting it myself.
“Freddy is the most truly chivalrous person imaginable! . . . and a great deal more to the purpose than all the people one was taught to revere, like Sir Lancelot, and Sir Galahad, and Young Lochinvar, and — and that kind of man! I daresay Freddy might not be a great hand at slaying dragons, but you may depend upon it none of those knight-errants would be able to rescue one from a social fix, and you must own, Meg, that one has not the smallest need of a man who can kill dragons! And as for riding off with one in the middle of a party, which I have always thought must have been extremly uncomfortable, and not at all the sort of thing one would wish to happen to one — What is the matter?”
Meg raised her head from the sofa-cushions: “He w-would say it was not at all the th-thing!”
“Very well, and why should he not?” said Kitty, refusing to share in her hostess’ unseemly mirth. “If you were to hear of such a thing’s happening, you would think it most improper, now, wouldn’t you?” A sudden thought occured to her, and she choked, and said, in an uncertain tone: “As a matter of fact, he said that Lochinvar sounded to him like a d-dashed loose-screw!”
The Responsible Gypsy 