Running the #1 live dating show means I’ve seen a lot of men walk on stage with a clear idea of what romance looks like. Some of those ideas are great. Some of them are, unmistakably, Kabir Singh. Bollywood has been teaching a very specific curriculum about masculine romantic behavior for 30 years, and some of those lessons are worth examining under better lighting.
Rahul from DDLJ: charming until he’s not
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge is the sacred cow and I’m going to be gentle about it. Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) is genuinely charming for most of the film. But there’s a pivotal scene on the train where he pretends to have kissed a drunk, sleeping Simran while she was unconscious, just to watch her reaction. He laughs when she’s horrified. It’s framed as a prank, ha ha, he didn’t actually do it. But the prank requires her to believe, for a moment, that her unconscious body was violated. And the film uses her panic as comedy.
This was 1995. The film was otherwise ahead of its time. But that scene is worth naming, because it established a template for "lovable rogue" behavior that subsequent films ran with in directions that were not benign.
Kabir from Kabir Singh: the complete package of red flags
Kabir Singh (2019) is the most complete catalog of relationship red flags ever assembled in a Bollywood film. In rough chronological order: publicly claiming a woman before they’re in a relationship, dictating her social interactions, controlling her appearance, threatening men who talk to her, spiraling into addiction and aggression when she makes an independent decision, and framing all of it as love so powerful it’s making him self-destruct.
The film made 379 crore rupees. Shahid Kapoor won awards. When film critics pointed out that the protagonist’s behavior was abusive, the filmmakers argued it was love. That’s not a defense, that’s the problem restated.
Kundan from Raanjhanaa: persistence as harassment
Raanjhanaa’s Kundan (Dhanush) starts pursuing Zoya as a child and doesn’t stop across multiple years and multiple explicit rejections. He slashes his wrists when she says no. He insinuates himself into her political life when she finally asks him to stop. And when he ultimately dies, the film frames it as her tragedy, her loss, rather than the endpoint of a pattern she was never responsible for.
This is the red flag Bollywood normalizes most effectively: the idea that intensity of feeling justifies persistence past consent. If you feel it strongly enough, the other person’s no becomes a temporary obstacle rather than a final answer. We broke down actual desi red flags vs green flags in detail, Kundan hits most of the red column.
Chulbul Pandey from Dabangg: machismo as protection
Dabangg’s Chulbul Pandey is a different category. He’s openly corrupt, uses violence casually, and courts Rajjo by surveilling her and intimidating every man around her. The film frames his possessiveness as protectiveness. His violence is comic and heroic simultaneously. Rajjo’s consent to his pursuit is partly manufactured by the fact that he’s removed all her other options.
Dabangg is a masala film and isn’t aiming for psychological realism. But the masala genre is where cultural values are most unguarded, you’re not analyzing while you’re laughing, and the values embedded in Chulbul’s romantic behavior are worth noting.
What these characters have in common
Every one of these heroes is centered as the protagonist, which means the audience experiences the story from inside his desire rather than outside it. From inside Kabir Singh’s desire, his behavior looks like passion. From outside it, it looks like control. Bollywood almost never shifts the camera to the outside.
The one shift that helps: notice how the women in these films are filmed during the problematic moments. Simran’s panic. Zoya’s exhaustion. Preeti’s compliance. That’s the story the films are also telling, quietly, in the margins.
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