Haseen Dillruba: A Saga of Toxicity Celebrated as Love

Haseen Dillruba provokes several questions about love, passion, sexual taboos, all with respect to the institution of a traditional Indian marriage set up.

The movie is set in the world of pulp fiction, and revolves around an earnest engineer Rishu, his frisky wife Rani, her hunky lover Neel, and a biased police officer.

Rani and Rishu, brought together into the same room by an arranged marriage, are hardly ever on the same page. Rani is a fan of lurid pulp fiction and a firm believer in a sexual adventure, while Rishu is a straight-laced man without a hair out of place or a crease in his clothes. Incompatibility and infidelity tear apart the couple, and this is the moving force for the plot.

The movie begins with some affirmations to the feminist ideals. For example, in her first meeting with Rishu, Rani does not shy away from the fact that she is not a woman who can be caged in the kitchen. She makes rebellious statements, and although she is a housewife, she appears to be breaking all conformist expectations that wives are supposed to meet. Despite her mother-in-law being severely disappointed in her, her husband struggling to defend her, she refuses to become ‘homely’, and her defense to this defiance is that Rishu knew her abhorrence of cooking before he agreed to marry her.

However, it was disappointing to see her revamp herself and become the kind of daughter-in-law Rishu’s mother always wanted her to be the moment she receives some validation and attention from Neel. She rushes into the kitchen for him in, as if it was an exchange of love and sexual satisfaction that she did not experience with Rishu. The movie only tries to impose the idea that women in love are only acceptable when domesticated. 

But the real enemy to the feminist cause, is the suggestion that for romance to succeed, it must border on a kind of sadomasochism. Once Rishu gets to know about Rani’s extramarital affair, the film begins to normalise, and even goes to the extent of glorifying violence, toxic masculinity, and misogyny.

Rishu gets violent, and attempts to murder Rani at various occasions. He makes vicious plans, and the house becomes a hazardous playground for Rani, escaping every attempt at murder. It is interesting to consider that if divorce was not a taboo, Rani might have given a thought in that direction. However, we live in a society that actively discourages divorce and ostracises women who seek it.

However, instead of attempting to save her life, Rani goes into guilt mode. She sees all of Rishu’s attacks as punishment for her sins. The movie never shows the violence as domestic abuse, instead it goes on to portray it as a reaction of a broken heart. 

Rani starts falling for Rishu after he had gone behind Neel to avenge his betrayal and attempted to murder her twice. It is ‘stubbornness, love, and guilt’ that keeps her from leaving her husband even after his wild proclamation of a death threat.

It is obvious that we are supposed to sympathize with him for what Rani did to him. Who cares what he did to her? Is an attempt to murder a justified repentance for infidelity? Especially in a society, where women dying due to domestic violence is nothing out of the ordinary, where it takes years of unlearning for women to realise that they deserve to have agency over their own bodies, that they are not mere meat to please and assuage the fears of entitled men, is it okay to represent violence against women as an answer to a true love’s betrayal? 

This idea of losing yourself in love, where violence and affection intermingle is not an alien invention. It very much exists all around us, and this is not the first time Bollywood has normalised misogyny and violence by packaging it has intense passionate love. Shahid Kapoor’s Kabir Singh is perhaps the best example of this. Kabir Singh was deeply steeped in misogynistic and violent tropes. Despite the rampant misogyny and toxic masculinity that is glorified in the movie, it was popularly hailed as an aspirational story of love and romance. 

Rani goes on to say “Main jab Rishu se pehli baar mili toh woh engineer tha, agali baar mera pati, aur teesri baar aashiq.” (When I met Rishu for the first time, he was an engineer, the second time he was my husband, and the third time, my lover). The only time she sees him as a lover is when he owns up to his toxic masculinity through violence, Rishu must rise to be controlling and coercive, capable of inflicting physical pain and emotional trauma, in order to appear as attractive in a ‘masculine’ way.

The movie brims with phrases that justify the violence and madness as a part and parcel of love: “Amar prem wohi hai jispe khoon ke halke halke se cheetein ho, taaki usse buri nazar na lage.” (Eternal love will always be stained with a few drops of blood, to protect it from evil.). “Paagalpan ki hadd se na guzre, toh woh pyaar kaisa?” (If love doesn’t push you to the brink of insanity, it’s not true love.)

Tapsee Pannu and Kanika Dhillon, in defending Haseen Dillruba, insist that the character Rani had agency and these were the choices she made of her own free will. They have also said that what they showed in the movie is art imitating life, a mere portrayal of reality.

However, does Rani really have a choice? She might seem to have agency at first glance, but that’s not true when we consider Rani’s social contexts. The choices aren’t made in a vacuum, Rani’s choice to stay in her abusive marriage cannot be justified just because it was a choice. Women are taught to stay in marriages, especially bad ones; to endure violence, and dismiss abuse, and numerous deaths related to domestic violence are an example of why women exercising their ‘choice to stay in abusive marriages’ is not exactly empowering. Women can make choices and those choices can be patriarchal and misogynistic.

The movie is not art imitating life. A movie that depicts domestic violence would be welcome, and Pannu’s own Thappad did that. But Haseen Dillruba doesn’t just depict violence: it glorifies it, normalises this violence, and makes it look acceptable because it is done in the name of love. Instead of acknowledging that Rani is a victim of domestic abuse who is guilted into dismissing the violence against her, the movie lauds her for staying the course and staying in a violent marriage. Haseen Dillruba errs in the same way that Kabir Singh did, by not just portraying a toxic brand of love, but also endorsing it.

Domestic violence is a reality for many women across the country, a lot of whom continue to stay in violent marriages due to insurmountable socio-economic barriers that don’t allow them to seek a divorce or leave abusive households. In a society like this, Haseen Dillruba celebrates a violence as a marker of love. The movie takes a detour from its feminist pathway to enter the haloed world of covert patriarchy, where control and coercion are presented as desirable. It reinforces the idea of sex as binding, love as dominating, and passion as killing. We need to ask ourselves, is Rani really free of her social conditioning when she makes a ‘choice’ to not just stay in an abusive marriage, but also fall in love with a man who has completely embraced his toxic masculinity.

- Smriti Choudhary