Aamir Khan’s third wedding is being celebrated. Would India be as kind to a 61-year-old actress?

Dubai: I wasn't expecting to feel oddly emotional watching videos of Aamir Khan getting married at 61.

Not because this is his third wedding. Frankly, that's his business. If anything, it takes a certain optimism to keep believing in love after two marriages have ended. Most people would retreat into cynicism. Aamir, easily one of Bollywood most enduring superstars, instead, seems to have doubled down on hope.

What really struck me, though, was everyone else's reaction.

The internet, which usually treats celebrity relationships like an Olympic sport complete with judges, trolls and unsolicited therapists, was unusually generous. Instead of outrage, there was warmth. Instead of lectures about commitment, there were congratulations. Social media, for once, wasn't sharpening its knives. There were, of course, the obligatory "Third wedding!" headlines, as if the number itself deserved breaking-news graphics. But the moral outrage never really arrived.

I couldn't help wondering whether we would have been quite so generous had this been a 61-year-old actress announcing finding a husband to marry for the third time in her life.

I'm not convinced. Women are still picked apart for ending engagements. Divorced actresses continue to answer questions about "what went wrong" long after their former husbands have moved on. We celebrate men for refusing to give up on love; we often treat women as though repeated attempts at happiness are somehow evidence of failure.

And yet here was Aamir, smiling beside Gauri Spratt, while videos emerged of his former wives, Reena Dutta and Kiran Rao, dancing at the celebrations in traditional Maharashtrian attire.

That image stayed with me far longer than the wedding itself. It also arrived during one of those strange weeks when the news seemed obsessed with relationships.

The timing made Aamir's wedding feel even more poignant. As videos of the actor celebrating with Gauri Spratt, and even his former wives, filled social media, another story gripped the country: a young woman accused of killing her fiancé after allegedly being forced into a marriage she didn't want while being in love with someone else. The allegations are now before the courts, but the juxtaposition was impossible to ignore.

One story reminded us how ugly love can become. The other quietly suggested that even when love doesn't last forever, it doesn't always have to end in bitterness.

Perhaps that's the real lesson from Aamir's wedding. Not that third marriages should be romanticised, or that celebrities have somehow figured out relationships better than the rest of us. They haven't.

But there was something quietly radical about seeing exes who didn't look like enemies.

Bollywood has always been obsessed with labels. Shah Rukh Khan is the industry's poster boy for enduring family values. Salman Khan has long leaned into the persona of the forever bachelor -- equal parts bad boy and eligible catch.

Aamir, meanwhile, has spent decades being called 'Mr Perfectionist' for his painstaking approach to cinema. But somewhere along the way, he's also become something else: a man who's refused to let age, divorce or public opinion dictate what the next chapter of his life should look like. There is something undeniably cool about that.

Not perfection. Not permanence. Just the refusal to believe that life has an expiry date after 60, or after divorce.

I only wish we extended that same generosity to women.

Because the day a 61-year-old actress gets married for the third time and the country responds with exactly the same warmth, I'll believe we've truly become comfortable with second chances. Until then, Aamir Khan's wedding isn't just a feel-good celebrity story.

It's a reminder that while we've become far more accepting of men rewriting their stories, we're still editing women's far too harshly.