It appears that she wants him and he’s too nice to say no. And later, when he falls for Mandakini, it’s almost a wilful submission. He wins over a woman who refuses to use the services of a Muslim. The film opens with Mansoor - he’s a porter who ferries pilgrims up and down the slopes - establishing how nice he is. Apparently, it’s not that big a hop from Dwaraka to Kedarnath. Wiki then reminded me it’s Nitish Bharadwaj. The father is played by a face that kept telling me I’ve seen the actor somewhere. But unlike that film, Kedarnath isn’t about taming the shrew. There, too, we had the horse-riding boy who lived with his widowed mother amidst the mountains, and fell for the bratty upper-class girl.
I was reminded of Betaab, for instance, which marked the debut of Amrita Singh (Sara’s real-life mother, who has bequeathed her daughter some of her refreshing sass and spitfire-spunk). If something tells you M & M aren’t in for a candied romance, you know this genre. Abhishek Kapoor’s Kedarnath is the well-worn story of opposites, Mansoor (Sushant Singh Rajput) and Mandakini (Sara Ali Khan). It’s a grand line that belongs in an aria, and it makes you wish the build-up to this moment had been similarly operatic. She simply says, “ Itne mein hi mar gaya to aage kaise jhelega!” If he dies after just this much, then how will he take what’s going to come! Her hysterical sister asks her to do something, else the boy might die.
The girl watches from the floor above, calmly. So far so familiar, but here’s the twist. The boy writhes in the slush as kicks and blows come at him. The girl’s fiancé (yes, this is the kind of film where she has a fiancé) orders his goons to beat the boy up.
The next day, the boy comes to her home to explain. She’s already been through a sort of trial-by-fire when the boy doubted her love, and now, something’s hardened inside her. Her father drags her away, but she isn’t kicking and screaming. They’re livid when they discover her in his house. I’m going to begin with the scene you expect in every story where an upper-class Hindu girl falls for a lower-class Muslim boy.