But the pandemic, the normalization of therapy, and the mainstreaming of queer narratives have shattered that assumption. Filmmakers like Zoya Akhtar, Shakun Batra, and Dibakar Banerjee have stopped asking "Will they end up together?" and started asking "What does together even mean?" While not explicitly about open relationships, Farhan Akhtar’s debut planted the flag. Akash (Aamir Khan) explicitly rejects the idea of getting married because "rules are meant to be broken." The film’s acceptance of Sid’s platonic, soul-deep love for an older woman (Tarun) suggested that love isn't a one-size-fits-all contract. It was the first major blockbuster to suggest that friendship might be the primary relationship, and romance secondary. Case Study 2: Gehraiyaan (2022) – The Deep Dive into Ethical Non-Monogamy? No film in recent memory has polarized audiences quite like Shakun Batra’s Gehraiyaan . On the surface, it is a film about infidelity. But beneath the waves, it attempts (albeit clunkily) to explore the psychology of open relationships.
The hunger for these stories is real. A 2024 survey by an Indian dating app revealed that 24% of urban millennials and Gen Z are either curious about or actively practicing consensual non-monogamy. Bollywood, which once dictated morality, is now lagging behind reality. But at least it is running. The traditional Bollywood climax—where the hero runs through an airport to stop the heroine from leaving—is a metaphor for monogamous panic. It suggests that if you leave, the love dies.
The new Bollywood is suggesting something far more terrifying and liberating: You can leave, you can come back, you can love someone else simultaneously, and still be whole.
Bollywood’s open relationship storylines are still messy, still melodramatic, and often factually incorrect about how polyamory works. But they are necessary. They are the cinematic equivalent of a couple's therapy session—uncomfortable, raw, but ultimately pushing a conservative society to ask the radical question:
But the audience has grown up. The urban Indian viewer, navigating dating apps, live-in relationships, and the complexities of modern intimacy, is no longer satisfied with the simplistic binary of "hero vs. villain" in love. Consequently, Bollywood is finally undergoing a quiet, fascinating revolution—one where the couple does not necessarily end up in a single-family home with a picket fence, but sometimes in a polycule, a platonic life partnership, or an understanding that "exclusivity" is a flexible term.
The Production Code and the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) historically frowned upon any depiction of marital infidelity that wasn't punished by the third act. An "open relationship" was a Western, decadent concept that had no place in the collective Indian psyche—at least, that was the assumption.
