They’ve been in a relationship for close to five years and Karan Kundra and Anusha Dandekar are currently back as hosts on Love School — the relationship reality show on MTV (Saturday at 7pm). t2 caught up with the couple for a chat on millennial love and what works for their relationship.
What is it about Love School that makes you come back season after season?
Karan Kundra: Love School is not a typical reality show where you have to do tasks and survive. It’s a place where you learn a lot about yourself, your personality and what you are from within. It’s about how you treat a relationship. It’s a lot of learning and as youth icons hosting this show, I think this is the best platform to make couples understand that a problem can change the way they look at life. This show propagates a lot of values like respect for women, equality for women, respect for alternate sexuality…. I have learnt a lot myself by hosting Love School.
Anusha Dandekar: Many reasons. For one, the subject of love has so many angles, there are so many different reasons to love that there’s always a fresh and new start to Love School. Every season there’s a new topic to talk about. Every generation looks at love differently and that makes the show interesting for me every time. And, of course, hosting with Karan is always fun and easy and I love the crew a lot.
How do you think the show has evolved through the years?
Karan: The show has definitely evolved by leaps and bounds in just the four seasons that it’s been on air. It involves a lot of learning and realisation. If you speak to people who watch the show, they will tell you that it’s a lot of entertainment, but also a show ahead of its time.
Anusha: Oh, quite a bit. Love evolves and so does this show. Mindsets are changing, and with Section 377 being scrapped in our country, I think now when we say that ‘love wins’, we mean it in all senses of the term. We want this generation to love without filters. The tagline for this season is ‘Loved and Alone’, which means that you may be getting love but you could also be alone.
What has hosting the show taught you about millennial love?
Karan: I’ve realised that love is love. It’s been there for thousands of years and it will be there for thousands of years to come. How we perceive it changes. Right now, there is so much of social media that defines relationships, but at the end of the day, it’s still love. As a couple, you have to find out collectively and individually what love means to you, not defined by society or social media.
Anusha: Millennials, in general, are quite obsessed with social media and we just want to teach them that loving is all about talking to each other and communicating mentally and emotionally and not just through an app. Love is not about counting the number of followers your partner has on social media or ‘liking’ each other’s pictures.
If you had to teach a course on love to young couples, what would you tell them to focus on?
Karan: Just being true to oneself and to each other and not be under any pressure to conform to what society expects out of them. If I had to teach millennials the fundamentals of love, then I would start with self-love. You always have to love yourself in order to be able to love anyone else.
Anusha: You have to keep it real and in the real world. They come into Love School without their phones, so they really have to talk to each other and be real. There’s a long way to go, but we are also trying to teach the country to love freely.
What’s been the key to the two of you keeping it together for so many years?
Karan: Communication, quite a bit of understanding and just the fact that you have to keep it together. You really should want to keep the relationship alive… the rest follows.
Anusha: When we are at work, Karan and I are thorough professionals and we have great understanding. In our personal time, we are really chilled-out. We also have similar likes and dislikes and we are also opposites (laughs). So it’s quite an interesting dynamic that we have. Our understanding, our ability to communicate with each other, the fact that we are both very passionate people are what helps us keep it together, in terms of our work and just life itself. We have great compatibility.
What are the ‘couple’ things you like doing together?
Karan: I like travelling with Anusha… I like eating with her. We like shopping together. Both of us are also big on visiting amusement parks. She’s a fun person to travel with and I love the fact that she’s an inherently happy person.
Anusha: We loooove travelling together! He’s my favourite travel companion. We are blessed to be able to travel together both for work and on holidays. We love eating together… he’s just feeding me biryani right now (laughs). We love exploring new places together.
Is there anything about each other you have always loved and anything you wish would change?
Karan: I don’t want to change anything about Anusha, for sure. She’s an independent and strong woman. She’s a woman of 2019 and that’s what I love about Anusha. She’s made it on her own. She’s also a traditional Indian girl at heart. She’s fierce… I love that about her.
Anusha: He can make me laugh in any situation, and that’s so amazing. I believe in life you should be with someone who can continuously make you laugh. You will stay young and happy forever, mentally. Also, it keeps a relationship healthy if you laugh together.
I don’t think I want to change anything about Karan because if I wanted to do that, then I shouldn’t be with him in the first place. I wouldn’t suggest that to anyone in a relationship because if you do that, then they are no longer the person you fell in love with. Of course, if someone has really violent and aggressive behaviour, then they need to sort that out. But I am talking about the smaller things. Just let them be and you will be happy in the relationship.
