I am Indian!!!

I am Indian.

The Indian film industry produces almost 3000 movies a year.

95% of them are love stories of some sort or the other.

The same society that consumes thousands of love stories for its weekly entertainment, has an arranged marriage rate of 80%+ in urban middle-class areas, and ~100% in rural areas. Inter-caste and inter-faith marriages are almost like a statistical error.

They are the same people who feel no cognitive dissonance when they go about denouncing dating and love-marriages as a hedonistic, narcissistic western fabrication trying to destroy Indian society. Even as they bankroll and spend thousands of rupees watching movies depicting individuals overcoming social norms (of some sort or the other) to find true love.

This disturbs me very deeply. It makes me think that as a society, we have become so utterly jaded that what we think of egocentric requited love is analogous to what a westerner thinks of magic in the Harry Potter series.

A pleasant distraction, a nice idea, but at the end of the day- an unattainable fantasy.