Trust Indian writers to find a way to paint destruction as an extension of love. This is the film telling us that everything that follows is written in the stars, and that the heavens get angry when the eternality of romance is thwarted. At one point, when she hides out in a cave with Sushant Singh Rajput (as Mansoor Khan, which is also half the name of Sara's famous cricketer grandfather) on a wet day, she swallows a few droplets and lyrically declares: 'I don't just drink raindrops I drink the whole sky' – a hint at the sky's impending fury if they aren't allowed to be together. For example, Sara Ali Khan's name is Mandakini, which is also the name of the river that floods the valley.
Everyone and everything is designed to texturize, rather than defy, the upcoming storm. In Kedarnath, the floods are less of a plot device and more of a comment on the 'timelessness' of the central love story. It is weighed down by the responsibility of defining the disaster by the lives and stories occupying it. But the Indian disaster movie is a different beast.
