Had I directed a film that made R218 crore in its first two weeks and is still going strong or had I been re-elected to power by winning 303 parliamentary seats when my own party and intelligence agencies predicted 220 seats at best, I would probably keep my mouth shut and enjoy my good fortune. Not so in the New India.

The aforementioned filmmaker who remade his Telugu hit Arjun Reddy as the Hindi-language Kabir Singh recently gave an interview that has gone viral. Critics have derided the film's "toxic masculinity" and its denying the heroine any agency. No surprises there: Salman Khan built a career on a conservative, small-town machismo in which the demure woman is merely a prop to enhance the hero's manliness. There is a reason why the Deepika Padukones and Kareena Kapoors of the world publicly announced they would never act with Salman Khan in his productions. He lately called Priyanka Chopra a loser because instead of being a prop in his latest mind-number, she opted to get married and leave.