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Mr and Mrs Mahi opens with a man who thinks he is the best cricketer in the world. His performance and coach say otherwise, but the entitled brat believes that he can bully anyone who comes in the way of him and his delusional beliefs, and this is the ‘hero’ of Mr and Mrs Mahi. Rajkummar Rao plays the titular Mr Mahi in this film which pretends to be a rom-com but is the story of a toxic relationship where a man, without a real job, tells his wife, who is a doctor, “Mere se pehle jaanta kaun tha tumhe (Who even knew about you before I met you)?” He dares to throw a cricket ball at her head and believes this is the right expression of his anger. He thrives on pity and feels like the kind of person who manages to make every single thing in the world about himself. Chances are that if someone went up to him and discussed Vinesh Phogat’s Olympics fiasco, he would turn it into a speech about how he always kept his weight in check.
When Mrs Mahi, played by Janhvi Kapoor, enters the picture, she is an overachiever who is quite content with her life. She studied tirelessly all her life, became a doctor and now, she is ‘happily’ being shepherded around in the arranged marriage market by her parents. She deserves better but much like Bawaal, she gets tied down with a man who is a walking red flag. She gives him respect and he chokes her confidence, she trusts him as her partner and he uses her as a means to an end. At one point in the film, he tells her that she became a doctor only because her dad wanted her to be, and now she should give that up and become a cricketer because, he implies, he wants her to be. But of course, all of this is done in the guise of ‘her dreams’. From the moment you see her, you wonder why the writers and director decided for her to be a doctor, a profession that’s equated with God in our society. Her decades of hard work are conveniently ignored for something that the film wants you to believe is ‘her dream.’ Clearly, the film does not respect either Mrs Mahi or her profession because all they want to be is a cheerleader for Mr Mahi.
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Mr Mahi starts coaching Mrs Mahi as a cricketer after he insists that she should quit her job as a doctor.
To make him look like the good guy, the film paints Mr Mahi’s father, played by Kumud Mishra, as a villain who killed his son’s dreams but honestly, he isn’t the bad guy here. He is the father who has supported the unrealistic dreams of his other son, who is now a successful actor. He would have supported Mr Mahi’s cricketing dreams as well but if the son isn’t good enough, how is it his fault? He still gives a job to his thankless son who ends up being the cause of a robbery in his sports shop and whines when his father slaps him after the said robbery.
Mr Mahi isn’t very fond of his successful brother and even whines in front of his mother about his ‘thankless’ wife who wouldn’t credit him for her cricketing career. The mother is wise enough to point out the irony of his ‘thankless’ bit but the film is not. There are many places in Mr and Mrs Mahi where you feel like director Sharan Sharma is fully aware of the villainy of Mr Mahi. He goes from being a man who is becoming increasingly frustrated with his aimless life to actively inflicting emotional wounds on his wife, but the film believes that the resolution for this can be achieved by a sad montage followed by a mediocre apology by Mr Mahi. While Mr Mahi gets upset with Mrs Mahi because she doesn’t give him credit for her success at a press conference, the film actually ends with Mrs Mahi giving her husband credit for all she has achieved, and calls her relentless hard work a “partnership.”
Mr and Mrs Mahi knows its loyalty lies with the man.
He spends all his time being the villain of her life in the guise of a hero but the film chooses to look in the other direction. His bad behaviour towards his coach, family, and wife has no consequences and he is rewarded with loving relationships without putting any work into them. The film begins like the story of a couple but turns into the tale of an unemployed frustrated man who finally gets some direction in life after years of being the physical representation of a pity party. She was just a project for him, a means to his coming-of-age, an instrument that was used to turn him into a hero in his own eyes which is why the film ends with his emotional resolution and not hers.
Hindi cinema needs to re-inspect the kind of characters that are shown as heroes. Like the Kabir Singhs and Animals of the world, the likes of Mr Mahi deserve as much hate, if not more. These are the men who try to make the false promise of being a better man but they are so consumed by their idea of masculinity that they refuse to see their partners as individuals who could have their hopes and dreams. Mr Mahi is just as much a red flag as Kabir Singh, and this one was not even punished for his behaviour.
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