An AR Rahman song has become the battlefield of the age-old career vs marriage discourse on Instagram Reels. The bachelors are using it to celebrate their freedom, while the “happily-wed” are posting their wedding videos to it. The same four Tamil words, two completely opposite PowerPoint presentations.
The reels on the pro-marriage side tend to open the same way as those against the institution. In her video, creator Aanal Darji dances to the lyrics, and as each word lands, the text on screen translates it.
“Kalyanam (marriage), katcheri (drama), samsaaram (married life), sammandhi (the in-laws), pen pillai (girl child), aan pillai (boy child)” — the song ‘Mental Manadhil’ methodically lists the steps to the heterosexual patriarchal family structure like a particularly judgmental instruction manual.
“Aiyaiyo oh mane (Not going to do any of these),” the lyrics go, denouncing conformity… but only until the beat drops, and the video cuts to wedding footage. “Until I met him,” reads the text on screen.
“Kalyanam is for fools,” the caption quips. Darji is happy to be the fool.
The song is from the 2015 film O Kadhal Kanmani, starring Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen. The film was remade in Bollywood as OK Jaanu (2017), the Aditya Roy Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor-starrer few watched and fewer enjoyed.
The comments section takes it from there.
“This trend should not die until I can do it please please please,” yearned the top comment.
“This kind of reels literally forcing me to change my mind about never get married,” wrote another person.
The other side has its own format.
“Life after choosing abroad,” creator Likitha wrote over videos of her building her life in a new country—working, researching, running her own days with nobody’s permission and, crucially, nobody’s mother-in-law. The comments celebrate her decision.
“No marriage, no kalyanam, no katcheri (laughter emoji) Just getting educated, making money, gaining experiences, enjoying the freedom, and living life on our own terms,” one read.
But then the marriage brigade arrived to reinforce the agenda.
“Tell me this after you turn 40,” wrote a marriage-minded missy.
It’s the oldest comeback in the book. A young woman choosing the terms of her own life? Cute. Wait until the biological clock starts charging rent. The line is never advice. It’s a threat with a birthday attached, and nobody ever explains what happens at 41. Presumably, the patriarchy just materialises in the living room and starts asking about grandchildren.
In the Viral Spiral of the ‘Mental Manadhil’ marriage wars, four Tamil words are being used both to plan weddings and to cancel them.
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Beware the conditioners
It’s funny how men are always exempt from the conversation.
They appear exactly once, in the “until I met him” cut, as a sherwani-shaped prop standing next to a woman who has just spent 20 seconds telling us she’s fine alone. The debate about whether women should marry is, as usual, conducted almost entirely by women, in the comments, for free, while the other half of the institution scrolls past in peace, occasionally pausing to like their own wedding photos. Somewhere, a man is being congratulated for showing up to his own wedding. The bar remains underground.
One reel stepped in to warn everyone off.
“Dear girls, please don’t fall into the trap of the trend that’s going around with this song,” it began, then laid out its own terms: “Remember, kalyanam katcheri only when in love, samsaaram sammandhi is fake, pen pillai aan pillai is not an absolute necessity.”
“Conditioning your hair is good, everything else is not,” the caption stated.
It’s the only post in the cycle that argues using the song’s own words against itself, calling the structure what it is—conditioning.
My stance, for the record, is clear. I will watch every “until I met him” montage—some of them are lovely—but I stay unmoved. A good wedding reel is a well-lit advertisement for an institution that still runs on women’s unpaid labour, emotional management, and the desperate hope that this particular man will be different. I’m too smart of a customer to be fooled by glossy marketing.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)