₹370 Biryani And The Lie Both Sides Are Telling

There is no free lunch.

That is true.

But lunch is not a down payment on a woman’s body.

That is also true.

The entire ₹370 biryani controversy exists because everyone involved in modern dating wants only the half of the truth that benefits them. Men want to pretend they are “just being nice” when they are often investing money with romantic or sexual expectation. Women want to pretend accepting that investment carries no meaning, no signal, no social script, no power game, and no obligation of honesty.

Both are lying.

One lie is more dangerous. The other is more socially protected. But both are lies.

The controversy, as reported, began during a stand-up crowd-work segment. A man narrated an interaction with a woman where they ate chicken biryani that cost around ₹360-370. Later, when she asked him to drop her home, he spoke about “recovering” the amount he had spent. The comedian Pranit More laughed and called it “Peak Gurgaon content.” The clip went viral. People criticised the man’s remark, the audience’s laughter, and the comedian’s response. More later said he should have challenged the remark instead of laughing.

The obvious problem is obvious: spending ₹370 on biryani does not entitle a man to sex, romance, touch, gratitude, affection, or even continued conversation.

If a man thinks a meal creates sexual debt, he is not dating. He is invoicing.

But the less comfortable problem is also obvious: if a woman asks a man to pay, lets him pay, expects him to pay, enjoys the benefit of being paid for, and then acts as if the meal exists outside any gendered transaction, she is also participating in a dishonest economy.

That does not make her body owed.

It does make the interaction socially loaded.

And pretending otherwise is childish.

Modern dating is full of people who want to consume the benefits of old gender roles while publicly speaking the language of equality. Men want the authority of providers without the responsibility of emotional maturity. Women want the benefits of being pursued, funded, picked up, dropped, entertained, and treated without admitting that this often comes from the same patriarchal script they criticise elsewhere.

Everyone wants the perks.

Nobody wants the bill.

The Male Lie: I Was Just Being Nice

Let us start with the man’s side because it is uglier.

The phrase “recover” is not innocent. It reveals the mental model. Recovery means expenditure. Expenditure means loss. Loss means compensation. Compensation, in this context, means access to the woman. This is the language of commerce entering the space of intimacy. It turns a woman from a person into a settlement mechanism.

That is disgusting.

No amount of female opportunism justifies that. No amount of bad dating behaviour by women justifies that. No “girls use guys for food” argument justifies that. If someone uses you for dinner, you stop buying dinner. You do not start talking as if her body is receivable value.

A man who cannot distinguish between being financially used and being sexually owed is dangerous.

And yes, many men collapse exactly there.

They say, “But she took advantage of him.”

Maybe.

They say, “But she wanted him to pay.”

Possibly.

They say, “But she knew he was interested.”

Very likely.

But none of that creates sexual debt.

A woman can be selfish, opportunistic, manipulative, attention-seeking, hypocritical, and still not owe sex. This is where many men lose the plot. They think identifying a woman’s bad behaviour automatically upgrades their entitlement. It does not. Her being wrong does not make your wrongness righteous.

If she used you for a meal, she is cheap.

If you think that meal buys her body, you are worse.

Both can be true. Adults should be able to hold two truths at once without short-circuiting.

The Female Lie: It Was Just Food

Now let us stop pretending the woman’s side is pure.

There is no free lunch. That is not a misogynistic statement. It is basic social intelligence. When a person pays for you in a dating context, especially in a culture where men paying is coded as interest, masculinity, pursuit, and romantic seriousness, the payment is not socially neutral. It is a signal. It may not be a contract. It may not be consent. It may not create obligation. But it is not nothing.

A woman who asks “what will you feed me?” or expects food, rides, gifts, planning, attention, and protection from a man she knows is interested in her cannot then pretend she is floating above transaction.

She is inside it.

She may not owe him sex. She may not owe him romance. But she does owe honesty.

If you are not interested, do not farm interest.

If you want equality, split the bill.

If you want traditional provider treatment, admit you are invoking a traditional gender script.

Do not ask for old-school male spending and then perform shock when old-school male expectations enter the room. You can reject those expectations, and you should. But do not pretend the script had no script.

This is the part many urban women do not want to hear.

“Princess treatment” is often patriarchy with better branding.

It says: I am modern when I choose, but traditional when I benefit. I am independent, but he should pay. I am empowered, but he should plan. I reject gender roles, but he should initiate. I dislike male entitlement, but I enjoy male expenditure. I want equality in respect, but hierarchy in effort.

That contradiction is everywhere.

And men see it.

Not always fairly. Not always intelligently. Often with bitterness and exaggeration. But they see it.

They see women who speak feminist language while measuring men by provider performance. They see women who mock broke men but resent being treated like commodities. They see women who say “men only want one thing” while treating male attention as an extractable resource. They see women who want dinner, cab, drinks, emotional labour, validation, and pursuit, while insisting none of it means anything.

Again: none of this means sex is owed.

But it does mean the dating economy is dirty on both sides.

The ₹370 biryani controversy hit a nerve because it exposed this dirt.

The male dirt is sexual entitlement.

The female dirt is selective innocence.

And society keeps pretending only one exists.

A Meal Is Not Nothing. A Meal Is Not Consent.

Let us be precise.

A man buying food is not buying consent.

A woman accepting food is not signing a contract.

But a woman repeatedly accepting romantic expenditure from a man she is not interested in is not innocent. She is exploiting ambiguity. She is taking advantage of the fact that men are trained to prove seriousness through spending. She may not have written the rulebook, but she is using it.

And men repeatedly paying for women while pretending they are “just nice” are also lying. They are not saints. They are making a bet. They are spending because they hope the spending produces closeness, affection, sex, loyalty, or status. When the bet fails, they call it betrayal.

This is why the whole debate is so stupid.

Both sides are performing morality over what is actually negotiation.

Men say, “I was just being generous.”

No, you were often auditioning.

Women say, “It was just biryani.”

No, it was often attention converted into food.

Nobody is clean.

But danger is not equally distributed. That matters.

A woman taking a free meal may bruise a man’s ego and wallet. A man converting that resentment into sexual entitlement threatens a woman’s safety. These are not symmetrical harms. Anyone pretending they are the same is either dishonest or too emotionally invested in male grievance to think clearly.

Still, asymmetry does not erase female accountability.

This is where online discourse becomes useless. One camp says women owe nothing, which is legally and sexually correct but socially incomplete. The other camp says women should not take free meals if they do not intend to reciprocate, which is socially sensible until “reciprocate” starts meaning sexual access. Then it becomes rotten.

The correct position is harsher than both camps:

Women do not owe sex for food.

Men do not owe food for attention.

Split the bill if you cannot handle ambiguity.

Say no if you are not interested.

Stop using people as wallets.

Stop using money as bait.

Stop acting like every bad outcome is oppression.

Stop pretending dating is not transactional when half your preferences are economic.

This is not complicated. People make it complicated because their advantages depend on confusion.

India Is Not Dating. India Is Negotiating With Bad Lighting.

Indian dating is especially confused because it is not actually modern. It is half-modern. People have dating apps, but not sexual maturity. They have salaries, but not emotional clarity. They meet in cafes and restaurants, but carry family scripts from homes where daughters are monitored and sons are indulged. They speak the language of choice, but still expect gender performance.

The result is absurd.

Men want women to be available but not “too available.” Women want men to be progressive but still pay like traditional providers. Men want sex without shame but judge women who have sexual histories. Women want equality but often select for status, height, income, confidence, and spending power with brutal traditional efficiency. Men complain women are materialistic while chasing women they primarily value for beauty. Women complain men objectify them while openly discussing men as packages of income, lifestyle, and utility.

Everybody is objectifying everybody.

Then everyone acts wounded.

Gurugram is the perfect setting for this because Gurugram is not just a city. It is a moral condition. It is glass towers over bad roads. Corporate salaries over emotional illiteracy. Expensive restaurants over cheap ethics. Men with global job titles and village-level gender politics. Women with financial independence still navigating a dating market where male spending is treated as proof of seriousness.

But this is not only Gurugram. Gurugram just gives it better lighting.

Delhi has it. Mumbai has it. Bengaluru has it. Pune has it. Every urban Indian pocket has some version of this contradiction: modern lifestyles, ancient entitlement, capitalist dating, patriarchal expectations, feminist vocabulary, feudal instincts.

The biryani was only the prop.

₹370 became symbolic because it was so small.

That is why people were disgusted. The amount exposed how little it takes for some men to feel cheated by a woman’s autonomy. But it also exposed how normalized it is for food, money, rides, and attention to become part of a gendered game nobody wants to name.

There is no free lunch.

But there is also no sex bill.

Both are universal truths.

If you accept the first and reject the second, you are defending coercion.

If you accept the second and reject the first, you are defending manipulation.

The mature position is to accept both.

A meal is not nothing.

A meal is not consent.

A paid date is not neutral.

A paid date is not a purchase.

That is the moral line. It is not difficult. But immature people hate lines because lines remove their favourite excuse: ambiguity.

The Ambiguity Both Sides Exploit

Men use ambiguity to say, “I never said she owed me, but obviously I expected something.”

Women use ambiguity to say, “I never asked him to expect anything, but obviously I enjoyed him paying.”

This is why splitting the bill is so powerful. Not because it is always necessary. Not because romance must become a calculator. But because splitting kills the hidden invoice. It forces both people into clarity. It says: we are here because we want to be here, not because one person is purchasing the performance of the other.

But splitting the bill also terrifies people because it removes gender theatre.

Some men do not want women to split because paying allows them to feel powerful. It allows them to say, “I provided.” It gives them a story about masculinity. It gives them leverage, even if they deny wanting it.

Some women do not want to split because being paid for allows them to feel desired. It gives them a story about value. It allows them to test a man’s seriousness without risking anything. It gives them benefit without commitment.

So both sides keep the theatre alive.

Then when the theatre produces resentment, everyone pretends to be shocked.

The comedian’s role in this is also worth discussing.

Comedy can expose social ugliness or normalize it. The difference is not always the topic. It is the direction of the joke. Are we laughing at entitlement, or are we laughing with entitlement? Are we making the man’s logic look pathetic, or are we rewarding it as relatable? Are we revealing the disease, or helping it spread?

In this case, the laughter became the issue because laughter is social approval. People can claim “it was just a joke” all they want, but jokes are how groups test permission. A man says something ugly. The room laughs. The ugliness learns it has a home.

That matters.

A sharper comedian could have destroyed the logic in the moment. He could have said, “Brother, if ₹370 gives you this much resentment, please date within your digestive budget.” He could have turned the joke against the entitlement. He could have made the room laugh at the man’s cheapness, not with his expectation.

That would have been comedy.

Laughing and moving on was cowardice dressed as spontaneity.

Outrage Also Lies

But the internet response also deserves contempt.

Outrage online has become too easy. People saw the clip and immediately found their assigned roles. Feminist accounts condemned rape-culture thinking. Men’s-rights accounts screamed about women using men. Influencers harvested reach. Everyone became morally certain within three seconds. Nobody wanted to sit in the filth long enough to understand why the incident felt so recognisable.

Because recognition is the point.

Women recognised the entitlement.

Men recognised the extraction.

Both recognitions are real.

But each side tried to delete the other.

That is why the conversation became useless.

The feminist side often refuses to admit that some women do use male interest materially. They treat any mention of this as victim-blaming, which is intellectually lazy. You can condemn sexual entitlement and still admit that women are capable of selfishness, manipulation, and economic opportunism. Women are adults. Adults can be criticised.

The men’s side often refuses to admit that their grievance about money is frequently a cover for wounded sexual entitlement. They say “we just do not want to be used,” but the anger often becomes most intense when the woman refuses intimacy. If the issue were only money, they would simply split bills and move on. But many do not want fairness. They want guaranteed return.

So both camps are full of fraud.

One camp uses women’s safety to avoid discussing women’s opportunism.

The other uses women’s opportunism to justify men’s entitlement.

Both are pathetic.

The Only Adult Solution Is Clarity

The real issue is the collapse of honest expectations.

If a man expects the woman to split, he should say so.

If a woman expects the man to pay, she should admit she believes in that gender role.

If a man pays because he likes paying, fine. But he should shut up about recovery.

If a woman accepts because she likes being paid for, fine. But she should stop pretending payment is meaningless.

If either person feels used, they should leave with dignity.

Nobody should convert disappointment into dehumanisation.

The problem is that dignity is rare in dating because rejection humiliates people. Men especially are trained to treat rejection as an attack on masculinity. They are told pursuit is proof of manhood, so refusal feels like public failure. Instead of processing embarrassment, they convert it into anger. Instead of saying “she did not like me,” they say “she used me.” Sometimes she did. Often she simply did not want him.

Women, meanwhile, are trained to avoid direct refusal because direct refusal can be dangerous. So they soften, delay, hint, accept, smile, evade. This creates ambiguity. Some of that ambiguity is survival. Some of it is convenience. The problem is that both look similar from the outside.

This is why mature dating requires clarity and courage from both sides.

Men need to stop treating spending as strategy.

Women need to stop treating ambiguity as harmless.

Men need to stop pretending money is generosity when it is actually expectation.

Women need to stop pretending being paid for is empowerment when it is often dependence performed selectively.

Men need to stop calling every rejection exploitation.

Women need to stop calling every request for fairness cheapness.

There is no free lunch.

There is no owed body.

There is no shortcut around adulthood.

The ₹370 biryani controversy is ugly because it shows us a dating culture where nobody trusts anybody, but everyone still wants benefits from the other side. Men suspect women are using them. Women suspect men are buying access. Men perform provider masculinity and then resent the cost. Women accept provider treatment and then deny the script. Everyone is negotiating silently and then punishing each other for failing to obey terms that were never honestly stated.

This is not romance.

This is a marketplace with candles.

And the more people deny the marketplace, the more brutal it becomes.

The solution is not to abolish generosity. Paying for someone can be kind. Letting someone pay can be sweet. Romance does not need to become two people scanning UPI QR codes in grim silence. But generosity must be free of entitlement, and acceptance must be free of exploitation.

If you pay, pay because you want to.

If you accept, accept with awareness.

If you expect something, say it.

If you do not want anything, do not imply otherwise.

If you cannot afford the emotional risk of paying, split.

If you cannot handle the social meaning of being paid for, split.

If you think splitting ruins the vibe, maybe the vibe was built on dishonesty.

The Bill Was Never ₹370

The man in the controversy deserved criticism because his “recovery” logic was morally rotten. But the larger dating culture also deserves criticism because it keeps producing situations where money is used as a proxy for desire, seriousness, masculinity, femininity, status, and access.

₹370 did not create the problem.

It priced it.

And the price was humiliatingly low.

It showed that some men need only a biryani bill to reveal how they understand women. It also showed that many people are still unwilling to admit that dating has become a transaction while pretending to be a vibe.

So here is the final verdict.

Men: stop buying food like it is a token for sexual access. If you cannot feed someone without calculating recovery, stay home. Eat alone. Work on yourself. Your resentment is not romance.

Women: stop accepting paid attention from men you do not want and then acting like you have no idea what game is being played. If you want equality, practise it when the bill comes, not only when the argument comes.

Comedians: stop laundering social ugliness as “content” unless you have the courage to turn the blade toward the ugliness itself.

Audiences: stop laughing at the parts of patriarchy you claim to oppose online.

And everyone else: stop pretending this was only about one man, one comedian, one city, or one plate of biryani.

It was about the lies underneath modern dating.

The male lie: “I was just being nice.”

The female lie: “It was just food.”

No.

He was often investing.

She was often receiving.

Neither of those facts creates sexual obligation.

Both of those facts create social responsibility.

That is the conversation people are avoiding because it offends everyone.

Good.

The truth should offend everyone who was benefiting from the lie.

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Sources checked: India Today, Moneycontrol, Zoom TV, and India Today follow-up.