A love story in 2023 is about couples bringing their families’ consent and happiness together along with each other.
About partners willing to learn to live with their love interest. In the case of heterogeneous couples, male partners are willing to accept and appreciate women for who they are and to provide their partners’ with space to grow and live their lives. They are open to change and put in efforts to make it work. Women are no longer bechari, abla naari. They work and earn for themselves. My views aren’t some general gyan I am throwing off at my keyboard but have been underscored by the movies that are coming up like Rocky aur Rani ki prem kahani and Tu Jhooti mai makaar. These are so different from the movies like Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge where not enough focus was on a woman’s career. Or what a woman wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I was a big fan of these movies and Shahrukh Khan. I still am a Shahrukh Khan Fan. However, I realize that the movies no longer make me feel warm on a rainy day. Those are not my ideas of romance anymore.
The general idea of a working woman in society seems to be that either she doesn’t involve herself at home at all (and hence she is selfish) or she is grinding away her life trying to balance both. The movie Rocky aur Rani ki prem kahani felt like an appropriate execution of the answer I wanted to give to all those people who I couldn’t explain what I meant.
Considering all this, I would like to analyze the Bollywood industry to see how love stories and the issues around them have changed over the years in India. I believe Cinema at some level gives a near-reflection of the society we live in and analyzing the Bollywood industry might be an interesting fun-time project to see how the stories of love have changed over the decades.