Sometimes a Bollywood Villain turns out to be a product of abuse!

South Asian movies, and usually those from India, are filled with brilliantly crafted villains galore.

One of my favourites to reluctantly jeer and sneer at is Rahul from Darr. It is very plausible that even though his love for a possible busybody carer of his ‘mom’ (to be fair, she’s actually his pretty stepmom, because his birth mum is such a callous piece of shit) is unhealthy at times in huge amounts and tended to lust too much for Kiran, he turned out the way he did because of how rather bad his home life also was. His dad, being considerably younger than his birth mum, was nearly just as screwed up and unfitting as a parent, but much of that shit consists mainly of neglect and bad parenting due to said dad being a huge workaholic. 

His stepmom, even though she did love and care for him a little too well, was sometimes a danger to herself and others. Even sicker is that the odds are nearly always being against her so much, starting with the possibility that she got ptsd from being bullied so badly by fellow pupils, which is mostly due to her being the least popular pupil who had ever attended the ultra corrupt Babla school. Even as she and her sole known friend were plausibly closeted bisexuals, her husband, who’s both a former bully of her and a pupil of the teacher who perhaps exploited him and birthed Rahul, didn’t really like her either but nonetheless had good intentions in mind. 

The same cannot be said of his own birth mum, who was a freaking screwed up lady, whose life was perhaps more awful than that of him. To talk about his childhood in a more daringly accurate light; I can say that she was a serial groper who perhaps smoked a lot, only to set herself, her former female pupil (who also was Rahul’s very beloved ‘stepmom’) and her former male pupil’s previous house on fire, mostly to ensure that Rahul and his very nearly dead dad (who happens to be the latter’s former male pupil) remained screwed up for life. 

Thank god, after very nearly dying at the end of the story, he slowly realised how bad he was and instead had to compensate enough for such a dirty past by becoming a snarky single dad, who adopted a good young sociopath and raised her well. 

Even after she got killed by Rahul’s own cousin, who happens to be named Bina, Rahul’s very own birth mother however remains a disturbing cautionary tale on how to get away with connections and survive in a really corrupt world.