No, stalking is never okay

R Madhavan is wrong to defend his character in 'Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein'

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

Welcome to the latest edition of 'stalking is a bad thing.' Do not get too excited; this is not another takedown of Neil Gaiman and his warped version of what constitutes consent. Instead, today we head a little closer to home and examine Indian actor R Madhavan, his 2001 Bollywood film, Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein, and his serene fondness for the shenanigans of Maddy, the stalkerish hero he so studiously embodied back in the day.

For reasons that are about to become clear, Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein never achieved box office glory, although thanks to repetitive television reruns in India (and for reasons that are less clear), it has been crowned a 'cult classic' by Mashable India.

A quick rehash

You may have been careless enough to let Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein, bypass you back in the day. If so, here is a speedy summary: Maddy and Sam (Saif Ali Khan) are mortal enemies. Years pass. They lose touch. Maddy espies a beautiful woman, Reena (Dia Mirza) on a dark, rainy night along a dirt road. Because rain is the ultimate Bollywood aphrodisiac, Maddy falls in love. ("My kinda girl" is how he christens her on the spot to himself.)

Maddy tracks Reena down across Mumbai, realises she is engaged, but also rather gleefully realises that she has never met the fiancé. Thanks to a devious brainwave, he decides to impersonate the fiancé for five glorious days, until the blasted man actually turns up and ends up being – surprise, surprise – the mortal enemy, Sam. (The confusion occurs due to Sam's irritating habit of using separate names for his lady love and mortal enemy – Rajeev for the lady love, Sam for the enemy.) Eventually, Maddy reluctantly allows Rajeev to take his rightful place. Because Rajeev knows how to read a room, he urges Reena to go and get her man (Maddy.) Reena and Sam are together at last. The end.

A dangerous stalker

As the title clues us in, romance is all about someone barging their way into someone else's heart, come hell or high water. Is this brash approach something to be cheered? Is there anyone out there willing to cheer for the hapless Sam, who had to tolerate this idiot at university and now has to graciously step aside for the man to marry the fiancée who was promised to him? Does he not win brownie points by dint of not being a psychopath?

"In the end, we must always remember that the real hero of RHTDM was Rajeev who took rejection like a boss, not the stalking liar who was glorified with the means of amazing music," wrote one X user.

Modern viewers, you see, have decided that rather than the romantic hero he was carefully packaged as, Maddy is a mendacious stalker, owing to his penchant for tracking down poor Reena across Mumbai like a bounty hunter and then lying through his teeth about his identity. Dia herself feels the same way.

"I was uncomfortable when Maddy's character was stalking me," Dia commented in an interview with Bollywood Hungama in 2023. However, Dia and her rose-tinted glasses gave Maddy certain allowances; she went on to add that actually, he was okay because he "respectfully" gave her his blessing to resume relations with her rightful fiancé, whom, lest we forget, Maddy had been pretending to be for all of five days without Reena's knowledge (which, as any romance lover knows, is an adequate length of time for two people to lose their hearts to one another.)

Playing devil's advocate

Does Madhavan himself feel that his fictional counterpart's red flag qualities deserve censure? Just like a writer is advised to write what they know, here is an actor who played what he knew. Ergo, he does not believe Maddy has any red flag qualities to speak of. This is mainly because, as he has informed us in a recent interview with Mashable India, he does not believe in flags. Of any colour. In his eyes, the damnation wrought upon Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein is the sole domain of snowflake Gen Z audiences.

"I don't agree with his green flags, blue flags nonsense," says Madhavan, by extension unbothered by the fact that these are the words of a walking talking red flag. "It's part of our culture. You can judge us with a Western yardstick."

Remaining faithful to his beloved Maddy, Madhavan continues, "Back then, if we wanted to meet a girl in Mumbai and want to approach her respectfully, how else would we do it? If you see someone and think she is beautiful, how else are you meant to approach her?"

Madhavan, it transpires, feels it is acceptable to channel one's inner bloodhound at the sight of a beautiful woman. "Are you supposed to just leave it?" he asks. "How else did love marriages happen? The people calling it problematic are not from that generation. You can't contact her without tracking her down!"

Maddy's sins, of course, stretched beyond an innocent tracking down exercise; once the uncomfortable truth dawned upon him that this woman he had decided was his forever love was engaged, he opted to shove aside that truth and invent a more palatable one of his own. However, even here Madhavan has a defence prepared.

"He was a very straightforward 'aashiq'," explains the actor, remaining consistent with Bollywood views on consent. For the unversed, those views are roughly as follows: the wants of a female object of one's pursuit are deemed as relevant as a squirrel's opinions on tax reform. Those who are interested in further examples can study SRK's Raj's antics in a train compartment in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge as he attempts to woo an uninterested Simran (Kajol).

Who is right here? Is it Gen Z's fault for ripping apart beloved classics? Or is Madhavan justified in defending his "simple aashiq"? There is no wrong answer here; there is only one right answer, and it is this: A man who does not believe in flags will never be able to recognise a red one – be it in a mirror or onscreen from over twenty years ago.