4 min readOct 27, 2026 06:41 PM IST First published on: Oct 27, 2026 at 06:40 PM IST“I knew exactly what I wanted” are perhaps the scariest words ever said. That is, when a woman says them.This past week has seen advice, commentary, lecture, opinion, all snowballing into an open panchayat on the cloud to decide if two women — actor Rashmika Mandanna and an ordinary woman in Kolkata — were right to marry the men they married. Except, the participants are strangers — to the two women, the men they married, and their marriages, revealing society’s deep-seated discomfort with female agency.AdvertisementRashmika appeared on Koffee with Karan with her husband, fellow actor Vijay Deverakonda, where one of the comments by Vijay — which went viral — was that she had to ask him to marry him a 100 times before he agreed. Apparently, that is all the information people needed to deduce that he “settled for her” and that the request was “humiliating” and that she should “run”. What if Vijay had asked her a 100 times? That would have been romantic.But that’s not the point.It is about being presumptuous that Rashmika didn’t know the kind of man she married, and somehow these viewers, based on one hour of a heavily edited episode of a talk show that is not meant to be taken seriously, do. As if Rashmika is incapable of thinking on her own. If Vijay, as these trolls note, was mansplaining while putting himself on a pedestal, aren’t these trolls too saying they know better? By taking away Rashmika’s control over the narrative about her marriage, aren’t they infantilising her?Also Read | Why I am on a hunger strike as a Jamia studentYou may argue that being a public personality, she signed up for it. She did, to scrutiny of her work, and perhaps, to a certain extent, her relationship, especially because Vijay is also an actor, but not her intelligence, especially not when based on assumptions.AdvertisementBut if we were to consider this wild take on Rashmika an occupational hazard, how does one explain the absurdity of the vileness for a video that was simply a heartwarming reel of a family pandal hopping during Durga Puja in Kolkata? The man’s looks and financial status — because they were in a rickshaw which, by the way, is the best mode of transport to navigate a swarming Kolkata during Puja — were weaponised to undermine the woman’s ability, again, to choose her partner. “With this face card, she can get anyone. I can bet this is an arranged marriage. Otherwise, there is no chance that she can get this baddie,” said one comment.Arranged or not, good-looking partner or not, travelling in a car or not, the digital firing squad simply refuses to believe that a woman can make an informed decision about her life. It feels like a compulsive need to enlighten her that she could have and should have done better. Is it so difficult to believe that an ordinary woman knows what makes her happy and that it may not be from a prescribed superficial checklist?Sadly, these self-proclaimed well-wishers hide behind the garb of feminism, but like Rashmika rightly said in her rebuttal post — it is “bullying dressed up as feminism.”Maybe Vijay is a red flag, maybe the woman in the video could have found a better-looking partner, but the fact is they chose not to. And if they were to regret the choice in the future, it is for them to make what they may of the experience. Feminism is more than just giving a woman her voice. It is also about not being in her business and letting her live. Is that so difficult?The writer is associate editor at The Indian Express. trisha.mukherjee@expressindia.com