Portrayal of Live-in Relationships in Bollywood
Posted on : March 13, 2023Author : Samragnee Chakraborty
Over the past 106 years, Hindi cinema or Bollywood has made attempts to put its gaze at various spectrums of life. One such spectrum Bollywood seems to be most fascinated about is ‘romance.’ Different movies have portrayed different ideas of romance. While some films like Jaane tu ya jaane na(2008) and Student of the Year(2012) revolve around college romance, Vivah(2006) and Tanu weds Manu(2011) deal with affairs in arranged marriages. At the same time, Mughal-e-Azam(1960) and Bajirao Mastani(2015) focus on love that can be traced back to the past. This paper centres on another such notion of romance, namely the live-in relationship, as portrayed in Bollywood. Several movies such as Arth (1982), Salaam Namaste (2005), Bachna ae Haseeno(2008), Cocktail(2012), Katti Batti(2015), and many more have decided to walk down the path of a concept that is still considered a taboo in the Indian society. The paper claims that even though these movies show a trajectory from the traditional idea of romance where the only option for a couple is “marriage”, they continue to reinforce the cultural notion by portraying the same result towards the end. The first part of the paper explains the privacy that the couple aspires for by staying away from families. This desire can be prominent because it gives them a sense of individualism and also allows greater physical proximity. Then it also argues the way the family and society tries to intrude so that they can adhere to the Indian norms. I am going to do the above mentioned by providing shreds of evidence from various studies that were conducted on cohabitations. I highlight the relevant parts and storylines of three movies to build upon them as evidence. The movies being analyzed are Befikre(2016), OK Jaanu(2017), and Luka Chuppi (2019), which have been produced in a period of last 4 years, that is 2016-2019. The movies have been chosen keeping in mind the brief period of time and considering their relevance in the present era where alternatives to marriage attract much attention. These also focus on cohabitation as one of their main highlights. I will then compare these with movies that portrayed marriages instead. Such a comparison will enable us to understand if any difference lies between the two. The paper finally concludes that even though these movies may be considered to drift away from the Indian traditions, they show a reiteration of the cultural values and norms because most of them end in marriages.
“Marriages in India dramatically evoke every possible social obligation, kinship bond, traditional value, impassioned sentiment, and economic resource”(Heitzman and Worden L. 1995). Movies like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham(2001), Toilet(2017), Shubh Mangal Savdhan(2019), and Hum Saath Saath Hain(1999), have made successful attempts to present before the audience an “ideal view of Indian romance” in compliance with the traditions and cultures of the country. These tend to establish the authority of the institution of marriage. The couples depicted in these films view marriage as the only option available to them. This illustrates how a man and a woman can stay together only after marrying. Given such a situation, the films dealing with live-in relationships might seem to portray a change in the concept of romance, where the couple lives together under the same roof without the institution of marriage. The heterosexual couples in these movies tend to try and explore other options before committing themselves to marriages, as we will see in the succeeding paragraphs.
All three movies, Befikre, OK Jaanu and, Luka Chuppi, are romantic-comedy films that have garnered much attention among the critics and advocates alike. The couples shown here try to negotiate with a relatively new concept of romance by living together without following the conventional route that society expects them to. The first movie, Befikre present the protagonists, Dharma(Ranveer Singh) and Shyra(Vaani Kapoor), who make a young and vibrant couple. Their love story begins with lust, but with the course of their cohabitation, the two gradually fall in love. Soon some issues lead to their break up. However, they choose to remain friends even after breaking up. Deciding to move on in their respective lives, they plan to get married to two different individuals. It is then when they realize their love and attachment for each other. This finally leads to Dharam confessing his feelings to Shyra on the wedding day. The movie then ends on a happy note of the two deciding to get married.
In the movie OK Jaanu, Adi(Aditya Roy Kapoor) and Tara(Shraddha Kapoor), who are found extremely dedicated to their careers, meet in the city of Mumbai. In order to spend time with each other before leaving the city for career, they decide to move-in. They stay together for six months, during which they come much closer. When the two get calls for their admission and job in two different countries, they find it extremely difficult to leave each other. However, before leaving for their respective destinations, they get married, which then ends with this beautiful ending.
Similarly, the movie Luka Chuppi revolves entirely around live-in relationships. It is set in the small towns of Mathura and Gwalior, presenting before the audience the mindsets of middle-class families of small towns, where issues such as cohabitation experience a lot of opposition. Guddu (Karthik Aryan), who is head over heels in love with Rashmi (Kriti Sanon), proposes her for marriage. But she suggests a live-in before taking the decision. Their twenty days live-in is full of fun and presents a humorous view. On understanding their compatibility with each other, the two decide to approach their respective families and talk about their marriage. But before they could broach the matter, the families came to know about this and misunderstood the couple as married. Unable to reveal the truth, they pretend to be married. Rashmi moves into Guddu’s house as the daughter-in-law. The story that follows leads to their marriage and the disclosure of their actual relationship.
- Creation of private and personal space
One of the distinct characteristics of a live-in relationship is that it takes place away from the families. The very idea of staying alone indicates the private and personal space that the couples thrive to build. According to Scalaco, the period of non-marriage is associated with individualism, freedom and liberty, which can be propelled by the fact that they take place “away from families” (Bhandari 2017). This allows them to escape family control and scrutiny and get a sense of individual space in relation to one’s romantic life. In the movie Luka Chuppi, the audience can see a huge disjuncture in their life when they stay alone in comparison to the life when they pretend to be married and stay with the family. The fact that Rashmi wears saree, sindoor, and mangalsutra impinge on how the family tries to establish its control. The couple expected to take permission from the elders of the family before going out also points towards the same.
The desire to create personal space can also be explained by the studies conducted by Rhoades, Stanley and Markman, who came to the conclusion that dating individuals longed for cohabitation as it allowed greater physical proximity (Mosailova 2014 7). It has been portrayed evidently in the movie Befikre, where desire for physical intimacy becomes the main reason for the moving in of the protagonists. Even though the couples build their own space, they can sense a lack or hindrance to their physical closeness in the presence of families. Whether the child of OK Jaanu, who found the couple kissing or the child eavesdropping in Luka Chuppi, both depict where the desire for privacy can stem from.
As the movies depict, cohabiting individuals create a separate physical space for themselves by moving into a flat or a rented house to get some seclusion. This is quite different from other films in which the protagonists are shown married. In films like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Dum lagake Haisha (2015), and Hum saath saath hain, the only private space the couples have is in their imagination, portrayed through songs. They lack their personal physical space and are under constant inspection by the family members which can also lead to intrusion into their private moments. For instance, the movie Azhar(2016) portrays that the couple, though unintentionally, but are interrupted by the parents every time they try to kiss. This shows how even some personal and private moments of the couples can be interrupted by the families.
- Intrusion by family and society
The families of the couples portrayed in the films that depict live-in relationships do not only try to intrude into their romantic lives. They also make constant attempts to accommodate the relationships under the moral frameworks of the family. Where in Befikre, the parents of Shyra talk about taking their marriage proposal to Dharam’s family immediately after they are informed about their affair, in OK Jaanu, the mother of Tara directly takes the proposal to Adi’s family without even consulting her.
The influence of families in arranging marriages has been ever-present in Bollywood cinema. It is not much different from other movies which do not portray live in relationships. As a piece of evidence, Hum Saath Saath Hain shows how the family tries to influence the relationships of all the four protagonist couples by fitting them into an ideal bond of marriage. The movie Dum Lagake Haisha also shows how Prem (Ayushmann Khurrana), because of family influence ends up marrying Sandhya (Bhumi Pednekar) despite not liking her.
Considering that live-in relationships are still a taboo in India, the parents, as well as the society, tend to oppose it as these do not comply with the institution of marriage. They try to shape these relationships into marriages to give some social appeal and acceptance. The very beginning of Luka Chuppi shows how the actor Nazeem Khan, who is charged with live-in relationship, is called as an “anti-national”. He faces brutal opposition from political parties as well as the public, who blame him for undermining Indian traditions and cultures. It also portrays the difficulties faced by Guddu and Rashmi while getting rent. They not only pretend to be married but Rashmi uses symbols such as sindoor and mangalsutra to provide proof to their fake marital relationship. The persistent neighbor in Luka Chuppi, as well as the house owner in OK Jaanu, who at first rejects the couple’s proposal of staying together, can be considered as similar. Both these characters represent the Indian society, which always looks down upon couples living under one roof before marriage. Although the couples find cohabitation as convenient, the society gives glimpses of successful marital relationships as an ideal form of romance. Shyra’s parents in Befikre and the landlord and his wife in OK Jaanu become exemplary for the protagonists in the respective movies.
One of the reasons that cohabitation lacks social acceptance is because of its equation with pre-marital sex, which has been portrayed in all three movies. The Indian society considers physical intimacy between an unmarried couple as impious. This can be verified by a review of the film Befikre, which comments, “these type of movies that promote one night stand would corrupt the minds of the youth and destroy our culture” (Jayakumar E times) Pre-marital sex primarily has to do with the notion of “purity” of Indian women. The conduction of virginity tests on women supports this claim. Women engaging themselves in sexual activity prior to their wedding are labelled as ‘impure’. In such a case, her moral character is always being judged and questioned. The movie Masaan (2015) shows how the orthodox architecture of the society torments the girl and throws her out because she engages herself in a socially indecent behaviour. This can be related to the Indian tradition of kanyadan- gift of a virgin (Bhandari). However, cohabiting women were also more likely to report having an unintended birth (43.5%) compared to married women (23.9%)” (Stanley 2018). In such a scenario, unwanted pregnancies among cohabiters may lead to much more anxiety than the married couples. This apprehension can be traced from the expression of Adi in the song “Enna Sona” from OK Jaanu when Tara fakes a baby bump.
- End in marriages:
Pregnancy in cohabitating women is a major issue because they are deprived of an identity that perhaps marriage would have given them. This has been captured very well in movies such as Kya Kehna(2000), Salaam Namaste, and Om Shanti Om(2010) in which the females playing the lead roles ask their boyfriends to marry them soon after they get pregnant. As seen in all these movies, such situations often question the morality of women and therefore, can collapse the relationships. Because of the pressure that the family and society creates upon the cohabitors as well as with the view of protecting the relationship that can collapse, most of the live-in relationships end in marriages. According to studies conducted by Macklin and Peplau, majority of the cohabiters tend to marry at some point of their lives (Newcomb, Bentler 1980 66).
- Conclusion
All the three movies, Befikre, OK Jaanu, and Luka Chuppi, in the very first instance, seem to be very different from other movies like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Vivah and many more in terms of the private physical space that they create. But interestingly, both these categories of films are the same with regard to the intrusion of family and society. The movies on cohabitation also reinforce the cultural values by portraying marriage as the only successful ending. Are the movies depicting cohabitation really different from movies portraying marriages then? Although the couples seem to explore and experience various forms of romantic relationships, they place importance to their social and cultural worlds by reiterating the tradition of marriage (Bhandari). Therefore, there is a sense of revival of age-long Indian tradition of marriage in all the three movies.
WORKS CITED
Befikre. Directed by Aditya Chopra, performances by Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor, Yash Raj Films, 2016
Bhandari, Parul. “Pre-Marital Relationships and the Family in Modern India” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, no. 16, 2017, Accessed on 20 Nov. 2019
Jayakumar, Padmajan. Rev. of Befikre, by Aditya Chopra. E Times.
Luka Chuppi. Directed by Laxman Utekar, performances by Kartik Aaryan and Kriti Sanon, Maddock Films, 2019.
Heitzman, James and Worden, L. Robert, “India”. 1995. countrystudies.us/india/ Accessed on 30 Nov. 2019
Mosailova, Natalia, “The Rise of Non-Marital Cohabitation: Review and Analysis of Existing Research” (2014).University Honors Theses.Paper 86.
Newcomb, Bentler, “Cohabitation before Marriage”. Journal of Family and Economic issues 3.1(1980): 65-85.
OK Jaanu. Directed by Shaad Ali, performances by Aditya Roy Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor, Madras Talkies Dharma Productions, 2017
Stanley, Scott. “Cohabitation is pervasive”, IFS, 2018.
Written by- Samragnee Chakraborty
Intern, AGA
***** The originality of the content and the opinions expressed within the content are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of the website.
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