A forty-second clip from Koffee With Karan Season 9 turned one couple’s private conversation into a nationwide verdict, and then reversed that verdict within days. Unless you are living under a rock, you would be aware of how Rashmika Mandanna and Vijay Deverakonda’s personal lives were heavily discussed on social media. Both shared posts on Monday (October 26), hitting back at the people who passed comments on their lives under the guise of being faceless and nameless.
I was reading Rashmika and Vijay’s posts, wondering why a couple has to give an explanation for their actions. Can someone call VD a ‘walking red forest’ just by watching a 40-second reel on Instagram? Is it fair to call the Kabir Singh actor ‘toxic’ just because he sat on the right side of the Koffee With Karan couch?
In an exclusive conversation with Filmibeat Assistant Editor Abhishek Ranjit, The Full Circle Founder Nupoor Mohan got candid about the public scrutiny over Rashmika-Vijay’s relationship and comments on KWK 9. She unpacked why we feel entitled to judge celebrity relationships, what the ‘she deserves better’ wave says about women who openly want commitment, and how this moment can help India talk about relationships more honestly.
For the unversed, The Full Circle is an online mental health platform democratizing access to quality therapy,
The Narrative Flips From Red Flag To Trolling Is Unfair
I was pleasantly surprised to notice that the narrative has been flipped from ‘red flag’ to ‘trolling is unfair’ within a matter of a few days. I asked Nupoor what this whiplash does to how people feel about their own relationships.
“The speed of the turnaround is the part I would ask people to notice. Wednesday the episode streamed. By the weekend, one of them was a red flag, and the other deserved better. By Monday, after Rashmika wrote her note, a large part of the same internet decided the trolling had gone too far. The couple did not change in those five days. Only the crowd did. For an ordinary person watching, that whiplash is corrosive, because it quietly teaches you that relationships are something to be scored by an audience, and that the score can change overnight for reasons that have nothing to do with you, Nupoor quipped.
“We see this in younger clients especially. They narrate their relationships the way they would narrate a public account, and they second-guess perfectly healthy choices because a comment section would not approve. The crowd is not a reliable instrument. It changed its verdict on this marriage three times in under a week. If that is the standard, no relationship survives it, including the ones in your own home. The only opinion that holds up over time is the one formed inside the relationship, by the two people living it,” she added.
Rashmika Mandanna Calls Out Trolling Over Accent. Does It Change Audience Behaviour?
How often do you see celebrities taking a stand for themselves and calling out the trolls for their remarks? Rare, isn’t it? Rashmika expressed her thoughts on the constant trolling over her accent during the Koffee With Karan 9 episode.
Does a celebrity openly speaking about trolling change the audience behaviour?
Nupoor shared an interesting thought with Filmibeat. “It helps, and I would not oversell it. When Rashmika said on the show that she is from the South of India, so of course she has an accent, she did something useful. She refused the premise. She was not apologising for it or promising to fix it. That reframing travels. A lot of people who have been told to sound different, at work or in a new city, heard themselves in that,” she said.
Does it stop the trolls?
“No. The scale of what we are dealing with is not fixed by one actor’s composure. As per the National Crime Records Bureau’s Crime in India 2023 report, 86,420 cybercrime cases were registered in the country in 2023, a rise of around 31 percent in a single year, with 1,305 of those being cases of cyber stalking and bullying of women and children. And that is reported crime, a sliver of the everyday cruelty that never reaches a police station.
Celebrities addressing trolling openly do not change the behaviour of the person typing the abuse. What they change is the behaviour of everyone watching it happen. They give the bystander permission to say this is not alright. And this week, that is roughly what happened. The sentiment turned not because the trolls had a change of heart, but because enough people watching decided the pile-on had crossed a line,” Nupoor is quick to add.
Will Rashmika-Vijay’s Conversation Turn Out To Be Useful For How India Talks About Mental Health?
I have talked to a few of my friends, asking them if they believe Rashmika and Vijay’s conversations would be useful or harmful for how India talks about relationships and mental health.
My friends, Vaishali Moghey and Sushmita Gupta, believe that such conversations can drive change. “I am disappointed over how Rashmika and Vijay were mercilessly trolled over their remarks. However, I am glad that the internet realised its mistake and is willing to understand their POV. Rashmika and Vijay’s posts prove that they don’t need the validation of others for their relationship,” Vaishali said.
How can I miss an expert opinion on this?
Nupoor told Filmibeat, “Useful, if we use them well. A talk show clip that gets a country arguing about readiness, commitment and public pressure is, at some level, a country practising a conversation it has never had in the open. The harm comes from how we have the conversation. Diagnosing two strangers from forty seconds of footage, deciding one is a red flag and the other a victim, is not mental health awareness. It is the language of therapy being used as a weapon. Words like red flag, toxic, and trauma came out of clinical settings, where they are applied carefully, over many hours, to a person who asked. Thrown at a celebrity couple from a phone, they lose all meaning.”
Where’s The Line Between Healthy Hesitation And Emotional Unavailability?
Filmibeat Assistant Editor Abhishek Ranjit also got in touch with Counselling Psychologist and Relationship Specialist Parita J. Shah, who shared her expertise through a clinical lens. She shared what a mismatch in readiness actually means, where hesitation ends, and unavailability begins, and how regular couples protect their relationship from outside noise.
There was a lot of hullabaloo over Vijay Deverakonda’s comments on how he didn’t want to decide marriage on a fleeting emotional moment. People talked about the dynamics of his and Rashmika’s relationship.
The big question remains: ‘Where is the line between healthy hesitation and emotional unavailability?’
Parita explained, “Healthy hesitation has a direction. The person is slow, but they are moving, and they can tell you what they are waiting to feel sure of. Emotional unavailability goes in circles. The goalpost keeps shifting, the person cannot explain what would change their mind, and the conversation itself is treated as an inconvenience. I will say one thing about the episode without pretending to know the two of them. Wanting a decision as large as marriage to come from a steady feeling rather than a single emotional high is, clinically, a reasonable instinct. Whether it was expressed kindly in the moment is a different question, and only the person on the receiving end can answer that. What we saw on Monday, both of them saying publicly that they chose each other, is the kind of evidence I would weigh far more than a game round on a chat show.”
How Can A Couple Protect Their Relationship When Others Meddle In Between?
Life is not a bed of roses, and every couple faces ups and downs in their relationship, but they need to protect their bond at all costs. How can they do so, especially when outsiders try to rewrite the story for them. Let’s hear from the expert herself.
“The first thing I tell couples facing this, and it happens to ordinary people too, with families and friend circles, is to agree on one version of events between the two of you, privately, before you respond to anyone. Outside noise does its real damage when it gets inside the relationship, and the two partners start arguing about what the outsiders said rather than about what actually happened between them,” Parita said.
“The second is to decide together how much of the outside you let in. Rashmika and Vijay chose to respond once each, clearly, and then, one hopes, to get on with their lives. That is a boundary. For a regular couple, it might mean telling a parent, lovingly, that this is not up for discussion, or agreeing that neither of you will read the comments. The third is to remember that a relationship is not a public document that needs correcting. You do not have to win the argument with the internet. You only have to stay on the same side as each other while it passes, and it always passes,” she added.
The takeaway is a hopeful one: the only verdict that counts is the one two people reach together.
