New Delhi: Gone are the days when the 90s had films where lovers wrote letters and were accommodating enough to make room for an occasional ‘Kabutar ja ja ja’ moment on the big screen in Maine Pyar Kiya. In 2026, they won’t meet at the railway station anymore. They don’t send telegrams professing undying devotion, nor does the heroine wait by a landline telephone, counting the rings.
Bollywood romance, once built on the agony of separation and the poetry of handwritten letters, has been fundamentally reimagined by technology. The first time that happened was with Dil Hi Dil Mein, the Hindi remake of the Tamil romance Kadhalar Dhinam, which introduced cyber cafes, internet chatrooms and email as the medium of exchange between lovers Raja (Kunal Singh) and Roja (Sonali Bendre).
The change reflects not just how characters connect, but how we began to understand love in a more connected, yet complicated world.
When Distance Was Destiny
In the golden era of Hindi cinema, distance was destiny’s cruellest weapon. When Raj and Simran parted in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, their separation felt absolute until their reunion in the iconic climax, with Simran running towards Raj in a moving train. The drama thrived on inaccessibility. Separation meant silence; longing meant waiting.
The Mobile Phone as a Plot Device
But technology collapsed that distance. By the 2000s, mobile phones began appearing in romantic narratives, first as plot devices, then as essential props. In Jab We Met, Geet’s incessant phone chatter wasn’t just a character quirk; it captured a generation for whom connection was constant, even cathartic. The instrument comes in handy even when she has to let off steam and hurl abuses at her ex-boyfriend with the help of Aditya.
Texting, Status Updates and ‘It’s Complicated’
The smartphone era brought deeper shifts. Suddenly, Bollywood had to contend with a generation that texted before talking, that stalked crushes on social media, and that fell in love through screens. Love Aaj Kal tried capturing this new courtship vocabulary — the deliberate delay before replying to a message, the relationship status that goes from ‘it’s complicated’ to ‘official’.
Jai and Meera’s modern love story played in stark contrast to that of the older couple represented by Veer Singh and Harleen, who communicated through old-school wooing of secret glances and smiles. The film positioned technology not as villain or saviour, but as a mirror to changing emotional rhythms.
Love in the Time of DMs
Social media added another dimension entirely. In Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Ayan and Alizeh actively use social media and technology to document their lives and interact with each other — DMs, posts and curated personas becoming part of the romance itself. Love was no longer just felt; it was performed, archived and revisited.
Swiping Right on Serendipity
Dating apps entered the narrative almost reluctantly. Bollywood, which built its fortune on serendipity and fate, struggled initially with the algorithmic nature of modern romance. Yet recent films have embraced the reality of swiping right. Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar centred the entire romance around modern dating culture, complete with ghosting, breadcrumbing and the chaos of managing multiple dating app profiles.
Fate was replaced by filters; destiny by discoverability.
Long-Distance, Now on FaceTime
Video calls became particularly significant for a cinema tradition that thrived on the pain of separation. Films like Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani and Shiddat showed lovers navigating long-distance relationships through screens. The trope of lovers pining across continents lost some of its sting when they could see each other daily.
New Conflicts in a Connected World
With physical distance no longer an insurmountable barrier, films had to find new sources of tension: emotional distance despite digital proximity, the performance of happiness through carefully curated posts, and relationships that existed more vividly online than offline.
In collapsing distance, technology hasn’t simplified love in Bollywood — it has complicated it. The letters may be gone, the telegrams obsolete, and the railway platforms less dramatic. But the longing remains, reshaped for a world where connection is constant, and yet, somehow, never enough.