Varun Badola, who is playing a 50 odd-year-old man again finding love in Sony TV show, Mere Dad Ki Dulhan, feels that it is high time that society accepts that love can happen at any time.”

“Sadly, though accepting love is taboo even for the youth, if a young girl will tell her folks that she is in love, all hell will break loose. Whatever little emancipation, we see, is only in the metros.”

Going on, he adds, “People need to understand that companionship is needed to pass the long years of middle and old age. Agreed, one might survive as a single, but man being a social animal requires a partner to bring out the best in him. Love makes you beautiful. Grown-up kids too need to realize that their parents too have certain needs. Here, our definition of love is so wrapped that we see everything only in terms of lust.”

Well said Varun, here he further makes a point “Love goes beyond just the husband-wife equation, but to even other equally important relationships like father-daughter etc. Recently, when my kiddo put her pix online at 10 pm, I commented, get to bed. Some a**** made some very derogatory remarks. See the level of depravity that you can’t understand a father-daughter convo. Our entire social edifice has decayed with most urban parents having no time and kids posting any crap on social media. The buck needs to stop with institutions like schools and peer groups. You can’t expect the parents alone to shoulder the blame, kids do get influenced by outside elements.”

Point out that mass media also seems to show women only as sexual objects? “Well, here we can’t see beyond profit margins. Everything else flies out of the window. This will only change when Gen X is more educated and evolved,” he ends.