Tere Ishk Mein: This tale of toxic love is bewildering

There are two ways of analysing this film—as a deep dive into unhealthy relation- ships or a complicated mess that tries to say too many things

- Lekha Menon

Is the heartbroken aashiq (lover) the new romantic hero in Bollywood? Is the 'I will die or kill for love' sentiment the benchmark for relationships? Doesn't 'consent'—one of the woke terms that have redefined courtship rules in recent years—exist in the scripts of Hindi film writers? Is violence the new love language? Do Bollywood's male lovers feel inclined to wear '100 shades of Kabir Singh' when it comes to negotiating their love lives? Is mental health mere lip service in the screenplay even when it's projected as the main cause of problematic behaviour?

These and several other questions raced through my mind while viewing Tere Ishk Mein, Aanand L Rai's (Raanjhana and Tanu Weds Manu 1&2) latest film starring Dhanush and Kriti Sanon. Come to think of it, this film should have been titled Raanjhana 2 for it seems to be an apt spirit animal to the 2013 tearjerker that normalised stalking and glorified toxic male traits. In a day and age of franchises and sequels, I wonder why the filmmakers shied away from latching onto the trend, especially when the plot of this film is oddly reminiscent of that Dhanush-Sonam Kapoor-Abhay Deol drama.

Dhanush plays Shankar, a college student, dabbling in student politics who has a violent... make that very violent... streak. He throws petrol bombs, beats up people, fights his opponents, barges into classrooms, disrupts lovers on Valentine's Day...you know, the regular crazy antics of troubled young men in India. He has a kind father (a brilliant Prakash Raj) but doesn't do much in life other than creating a nuisance for others.