Every generation of Indian movie fans has its sacred cows. For the millennials, one of them is Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein (2001).
Maddy (R Madhavan) sees Reena (Dia Mirza) and instantly decides that she belongs to him. He gets her number and then pursues her endlessly. When Maddy learns she is engaged, he doesn’t back off. With his friends’ help, he impersonates Rajeev, the man Reena is about to marry, and again tries to woo her.
The film calls this ‘lub’, but in the real world, it’s the first paragraph of a police complaint.
The most problematic thing about RHTDM is the assumption that Reena’s feelings can be unlocked with the right amount of pressure and persuasion. Maddy relentlessly schemes, stalks, lies, until her resistance ends. The film presents this as the natural arc of romance.
But the truth is that it isn’t. This is a template that has been handed to generations of boys, giving them the impression that if she says no, you simply haven’t tried hard enough.
Reena does end up discovering the lie. She feels betrayed and cancels her relationship with Maddy despite his desperate attempts to explain himself. She remains uninterested even after he comes clean, and he takes a job transfer to San Francisco to erase his memories of her. But, still the film ensures the two end up together.
Also read: Vijay Deverakonda is the Ranbir Kapoor of the South. Both are tone-deaf to love, women’s desires
Bollywood’s ‘no’
The woman’s ‘NO’ never gets to be final. It is always a pause before the eventual ‘yes’.
Then there is Saif Ali Khan, who plays Reena’s fiance Rajeev. He is the man she had agreed to marry. The film, however, portrays him to be the bad guy, the rival to be defeated.
It’s funny that RHTDM turns a liar into a hero and makes an obstacle out of an honest person.
The moral of the story is that honesty gets punished, deception and lies get rewarded, and a woman is the prize at the end of both.
The defence usually runs along these lines: Maddy is sweet, Maddy is sincere, Maddy means well. Even Dia Mirza admitted to this.
In a 2023 interview with The Indian Express, Dia said she was uncomfortable when Maddy’s character was stalking her.
“Although Reena (Dia’s character) acknowledges it. She has that moment when she tells him off. What works is that people get past that notion, that it’s okay. In fact, Maddy’s character at the end has very strong values. He is respectful, he is kind and he is well-intentioned, most importantly.”
Madhavan, unfortunately, has a different opinion. In an interview with India TV in 2025, he defended Maddy, arguing that if trying to meet a woman at a social gathering counts as stalking, then even his own father could be accused of it.
It’s a charming line but Mr Madhavan, meeting someone at a wedding is not the same as impersonating her fiance. Nobody is asking for a ban on courtship. We are asking for the basic distinction between approaching someone and manipulating and lying to them.
I am not being a killjoy. The stakes are real. Stalking is a crime in India, and has been since the 2013 amendments added Section 354D to the IPC (now BNS). Every woman who has dealt with a stalker knows that fear — checking corners, changing routes, and the dread that follows a man who ‘just really likes you.’
It’s worth remembering that RHTDM wasn’t even a box office hit at first. Madhavan has spoken about how hurt he was when it flopped at release. Then nostalgia did its thing and it became a cult classic. The film was re-released on 30 August 2024 and earned over Rs 3.50 crore, outperforming its original run.
(Edited by Janaki Pande)