Revisiting KANK: How Bollywood Glorifies Infidelity
In 2006, when Karan Johar released Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (KANK), it sent shockwaves through Indian cinema. This was not the candyfloss love story audiences expected from the man who gave them Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kal Ho Naa Ho. Instead, Johar dared to show married people falling in love outside marriage — and not being punished for it.
Dev (Shah Rukh Khan) and Maya (Rani Mukerji) were not villains; they were sympathetic, lonely, yearning for connection in loveless marriages. The camera didn’t shame them — it lingered lovingly, even mournfully, as they walked hand in hand through New York streets. And in that slow, soulful walk, Bollywood quietly crossed a line: infidelity was no longer sin, it was sorrow.
Nineteen years later, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna feels like the film that cracked open Bollywood’s moral code. But watching it again in 2025, in an era of viral podcasts, digital cheating, and a culture obsessed with “soft launching” new partners, one question hits harder than ever: did Karan Johar’s magnum opus accidentally glorify infidelity?
The Beautiful Betrayal: How KANK Romanticized Cheating
The brilliance — and danger — of KANK lies in its tone. It’s not about lust or betrayal in the traditional sense; it’s about loneliness, emotional starvation, and the “right love at the wrong time.” Johar paints his adulterers as victims of unfulfilling marriages: Maya feels unloved by her cheerful but shallow husband Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan), while Dev resents his wife Rhea’s (Preity Zinta) career success and emotional independence.
But instead of interrogating their emotional immaturity or communication breakdown, KANK makes the affair look like salvation. Their forbidden love is filmed in soft lighting and scored with Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s achingly beautiful “Mitwa.”
Infidelity here isn’t an ethical lapse — it’s therapy. Dev and Maya’s emotional affair is presented as something sacred, soulful, even necessary. Their loneliness becomes justification for betrayal.
And that’s the cinematic sleight of hand: by turning adultery into emotional healing, KANK blurs moral boundaries. We don’t see two people betraying their spouses; we see two “broken souls” finding light. The film doesn’t just excuse infidelity — it romanticizes it as destiny.
Karan Johar’s Confession: Cinema as Emotional Catharsis
Johar has often said KANK was his “most misunderstood” film. In interviews, he defended it:
“It was about identifying the death of love in a marriage. I wasn’t glorifying infidelity. I was exposing unhappiness.”
Fair enough. But intention doesn’t erase impact. The film’s ending — with Dev and Maya reunited years later, after ruining two marriages — reads like vindication, not regret.
They may suffer, but they are rewarded with each other. The camera forgives them; the audience does too. Compare this to earlier films like Silsila (1981) or Arth (1982), where cheating carried a heavy price. In KANK, the price is heartbreak — not morality.
And yet, Johar’s version of love found outside marriage struck a cultural chord. It gave language to the loneliness of modern urban relationships. But it also gave cover to moral confusion. For an entire generation, KANK suggested that “if it feels right, it can’t be wrong.”
The Bollywood Problem: Infidelity as Aesthetic
Bollywood has always flirted with infidelity, but KANK turned it into an aesthetic — glamorous, poetic, tragic. From Silsila’s garden strolls to Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna’s candlelit corners, infidelity is rarely ugly on screen. It’s beautiful. It’s cinematic.
Recent examples — Gehraiyaan (2022), Lust Stories, Ajeeb Daastaans — have tried to modernize the conversation, showing emotional cheating as messy and damaging. Yet, even in these narratives, the camera often sides with the cheater. The betrayal is framed as “self-discovery,” the victim as repressed or naïve.
The pattern is clear: Bollywood doesn’t condemn infidelity. It aestheticizes it.
The logic goes: “Love is complex; marriage is outdated; following your heart is brave.” But as these stories multiply, so does the normalization of betrayal. Cinema, intentionally or not, teaches empathy for the adulterer — rarely for the betrayed.
Fast-Forward to 2025: The ‘Too Much’ Talk Show Controversy
Enter the latest cultural flashpoint: Twinkle Khanna and Kajol’s remarks on their new talk show Too Much.
In an episode that aired earlier this month, the hosts — joined by Karan Johar and Janhvi Kapoor — debated emotional vs. physical infidelity. Kajol and Twinkle argued that “emotional cheating” hurts more than physical cheating, while Twinkle reportedly quipped that “if it’s just physical, sometimes you move on — raat gayi, baat gayi.”
That one line exploded online.
Clips circulated across X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, with users accusing both actors of “trivializing betrayal.” One post with over 3 million views read:
“So now infidelity is fine as long as it’s just ‘physical’? Imagine saying that to someone whose trust was broken.”
Others defended them, arguing that Kajol and Twinkle were simply acknowledging relationship realism — that many long marriages survive physical betrayal but collapse under emotional disconnect.
But the optics were bad. Two women who once represented marital ideals — Kajol, the loyal Simran from DDLJ, and Twinkle, married to Akshay Kumar for over two decades — now seemed to publicly defend cheating.
Psychologist Dr. Meeta Nanda told Times of India:
“Forgiving physical cheating doesn’t make you evolved — it may mean emotional suppression or normalization of betrayal.”
(TOI, Oct 2025)
The Internet Reacts: Double Standards and Generational Clashes
What made the Too Much controversy blow up wasn’t just the remark — it was the generational clash it revealed.
Janhvi Kapoor, in the same episode, firmly disagreed:
“Cheating is cheating. Emotional or physical — both mean you’ve broken trust.”
Twinkle, 50, responded with a smirk: “When you’re 25, you’ll feel that way. When you’re 45, life feels… different.”
That exchange went viral for its condescension. Younger viewers saw it as proof that Bollywood’s older elite had normalized moral ambiguity. “So, cheating becomes wisdom after 40?” read one trending comment.
The debate mirrors the larger cultural shift: millennials and Gen Z audiences — more therapy-literate, emotionally aware — increasingly see betrayal as a boundary violation, not just a “mistake.” Bollywood’s older guard, meanwhile, often frames cheating as “human” or “inevitable.”
This disconnect shows up not just in talk shows but in storytelling — and it’s why Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna feels so ripe for re-examination now.
Infidelity by the Numbers: What the Data Says (2025)
Let’s ground this cultural drama in hard data. Because infidelity in India isn’t a movie trope — it’s a social trend.
According to a 2025 Ashley Madison–YouGov global survey:
- 53% of Indian adults admit to having cheated at least once.
- India ranks among the top 3 nations globally for reported infidelity.
- 48% of respondents said their affair was primarily emotional, not physical.
A Gleeden study in 2024 found that:
- 40% of married Indians admitted to having “digital affairs.”
- 51% said they lacked emotional connection with their spouse.
Meanwhile, a Mid-Day Lifestyle survey (2025) reported:
“India’s cheating rate has dropped 16% since 2023, but ‘infidelity fatigue’ is rising — people are tired of moral ambiguity and double lives.”
These numbers show a strange paradox: cheating is common, but the social tolerance for it is shrinking. In other words, infidelity is no longer taboo — but it’s also no longer cool.
And yet, Bollywood hasn’t caught up. On screen and on talk shows, cheating still gets the soft-focus treatment.
The Moral Mirage: Why Audiences Still Root for the Cheater
Let’s be honest: KANK worked because it made us complicit. We rooted for Dev and Maya. We wanted them to find happiness — even if it meant destroying two marriages.
Why? Because the film weaponized loneliness. It made us see emotional emptiness as the ultimate tragedy and betrayal as the cure.
Psychologically, audiences empathize with transgressors who are emotionally unfulfilled. They project their own fears of neglect, boredom, or invisibility. So when a film frames cheating as “a desperate act of love,” it becomes cathartic rather than condemnable.
This is the emotional mechanism behind glorification: the story convinces you that betrayal is healing.
From Silver Screen to Small Screen: Bollywood’s Cheating Obsession Evolves
Since KANK, infidelity has evolved in Bollywood narratives — but the glorification remains, only subtler.
In Gehraiyaan (2022), Deepika Padukone’s character cheats not out of lust but emotional suffocation. The film tried to be morally gray, but still wrapped the affair in glossy aesthetics and soft empathy.
In Made in Heaven (Season 2), extramarital affairs are everywhere — but often justified by trauma, patriarchy, or emotional neglect. The cheater is rarely just wrong; they’re wounded.
Even web shows like Decoupled and Modern Love Mumbai flirt with the idea that modern marriage can’t handle “authentic desire.”
It’s the same narrative repackaged for a woke audience: infidelity as self-discovery, not betrayal.
The Kajol–Twinkle Moment as Mirror
The Too Much controversy wasn’t just gossip — it was a mirror. It showed how Bollywood veterans still carry the emotional DNA of films like KANK: empathy for the cheater, rationalization of the act, and aesthetic detachment from the pain caused.
Twinkle Khanna’s line — “sometimes, you move on” — could easily be dialogue from KANK. The language hasn’t changed in 19 years; only the platform has.
But the audience has changed. Today’s viewers don’t want to “move on” — they want accountability, communication, closure. And they want their stories — and their celebrities — to acknowledge that betrayal has consequences.
The Real Glorification Problem
So, is Bollywood really glorifying infidelity? Yes — but not in the way people think.
It’s not about showing affairs as sexy or desirable. It’s about refusing to hold anyone accountable.
In KANK, Dev and Maya suffer but never atone. In Gehraiyaan, the characters drown (literally and emotionally), but the framing still valorizes their vulnerability. On Too Much, the hosts laugh off physical cheating as a “phase.”
That’s the glorification: not calling betrayal by its name.
Infidelity in Bollywood isn’t sin — it’s scenery. It’s just another backdrop for songs, tears, and redemption arcs.
The Emotional Fallout We Don’t See
What’s missing in these portrayals are the real victims of infidelity — the betrayed partners, the children, the collateral emotional damage.
In KANK, Rhea (Preity Zinta) and Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan) are reduced to caricatures — the career woman and the man-child — conveniently written off so the audience doesn’t feel bad for them.
That’s how the film gets away with it. It strips the betrayed of depth, so betrayal feels harmless.
But in real life, infidelity shatters trust, self-worth, and family structures. It isn’t poetic — it’s painful. And cinema’s refusal to show that pain fully is what normalizes cheating as “just another kind of love.”
The New Morality: Audiences Are Changing
The backlash to Kajol and Twinkle proves that audiences are no longer buying sanitized betrayal. They crave emotional honesty — not escapist moral relativism.
In fact, new-age creators like Zoya Akhtar, Alankrita Shrivastava, and Shakun Batra are beginning to show infidelity without glamor — as messy, unromantic, and consequential. That’s the shift: empathy without endorsement.
If Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna was the start of Bollywood’s moral midlife crisis, maybe the next era will be about emotional accountability.
Conclusion: The Goodbye That Never Came
Revisiting Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna in 2025 feels like watching a film that changed Bollywood — but maybe not for the better. It gave the industry permission to treat infidelity as a symptom, not a sin.
The Too Much controversy shows that this moral elasticity still thrives among its stars. But audiences have evolved. They don’t want “Mitwa” playing while marriages crumble in soft focus. They want real talk about betrayal, boundaries, and choice.
Bollywood can — and should — tell stories about love gone wrong. But until it learns to show that cheating is not liberation but evasion, we’ll keep mistaking betrayal for bravery.
Perhaps it’s time to finally say Alvida — not just to toxic love stories, but to the glorification of infidelity itself.
Also Read – Dreame X40 Ultra Review 2025: Smart Cleaning Powerhouse
