Ek Ticket, Ek Black Coffee | With The Night Manager, curly top Aditya Roy Kapur scores with his female fans!

All the women who watched Aditya Roy Kapur's Shan Sengupta in The Night Manager, walk on the beach (shirt buttons undone) with their husbands and boyfriends or family, and gasped silently into the cushions they were hugging, please raise their hands! All those women who gasped aloud and were told by their husbands and boyfriends and family, ‘I thought you liked Ronaldo!’, ‘This guy must be too thin in real life!’, ‘You’re so fickle! Just last year you were screaming when Rafa took off his shirt in the middle of a tennis match!’

Take a bow director Priyanka Ghose! Because you’re the one who is at fault here. Your nefarious plan to dislodge the one true lord of Dard-e-disco gorgeousness has now been exposed! Your gaze is responsible for the madness sweeping across the nation. Those who pined away for Tom Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine are now slaves of Shan. 

But I’m made of tougher stuff. How can a lad drunk on Aashiqui who jumped off a bridge compete with a man who wore linens and walked on the beach, smiling ever so slightly at Alia Bhatt running circles around him, sharing her deepest, darkest thoughts?

Also Read | The Night Manager review: Aditya Roy Kapur and Anil Kapoor bring order to the chaos, but with a sudden jerk

It’s not that I don’t approve of Shan Sengupta’s delicious breadth of shoulders and his eyelashes (does his makeup person need to use the medieval eyelash curling torture device, I wonder). I do. But kya uske paas woh baahein failane wala action hai? The thing that makes an entire auditorium filled with women want to run into those arms (pollen allergies in the sarson ke khet notwithstanding?)

I listened to Arijit Singh singing Enna Sona and Tum Hi Ho and realised one thing. Even when the lord and master of romance was missing his Meera Thapar, and had lost his memory, he was still smiling at the efforts of Akira Rai to get his attention with a song and dance (Jiya Jiya Re!). And his song about not knowing what Challa was seeking when wandering about is pure seduction, not meditative. 

Also Read | The Night Manager Part 2 review: Anil Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur draw a gripping conclusion on the lines of the circle of life 

So Shan Sengupta’s ‘I hesitate therefore I’m in love’ draping of the jacket over the girl (and himself) to shelter from that rain in the middle of slow-moving traffic did not prove to seduce the auditorium filled with women. It was the TikTok generation that had bunked college who identified with that scene. Skinny-legged boys with that chhapri anti-gravity haircut who wouldn’t dare to ask a girl out to the movies who stalked their Gram-crushes when the song played in the film (and they clutched their phones to their hearts…

I could not understand why women wrote letters in blood to Rajesh Khanna, nor do I understand why fans screamed when the British Boy band, The Beatles, began to play “Love love me do!”. But Shah Rukh Khan always manages to make me smile back when he’s dancing like a demented man on a train! Even when he’s draped artistically in some Farah Khan choreographed song of pain in Dil Se he makes me want to kiss his tears away. So Shan Sengupta cupping Shobita Dhulipalia’s injured face to reassure her that she’s safe (oops! Spoiler alert for The Night Manager season two ) should make my heart go dhak dhak.

I waited to watch Lust Stories 2 on Netflix and I groaned so much, it matched the thunderous skies. Where are the George Clooneys? It was more like Reality Tales with married men lying to cover extramarital affairs, old zamindars lusting after maids, callow lads who are poor scholars, directionless, and yes, unimpressive… The women are reduced to being connected to them?! Being a happy voyeur is the only respite? Puhlees, no. Heck Mandalorian with his face covered saying, "This is the way," inspired more lust than these tales of miserable reality.  

And then I figured out that The Night Manager is playing the quintessential role of the protector which is super attractive. A role very few men are playing on screen. They’re mostly ‘apun God hai’ or something akin to that, gaali-giving-gaon-guys, men killing other men… Remember how everyone gushed about Jaideep Ahlawat as the man who trains Alia Bhatt in Raazi? He played the protector!

I humbly conclude. Despite progress and years of struggle for equal rights, along comes a Shan Sengupta who walks barefoot on the beach, and protects bechari Kaveri to make us sigh and sigh some more because he’s so good with that annoying kid Taha… And I reiterate, more women directors please! Only they can give us ‘the feels’, that Colin Firth emerging from the lake moment when Shan is in the pool fully clothed doing mara mari with the bad guy… Among all the new bunch of wannabe dhak dhak boys, my imarti goes to Shan Sengupta!

(All images, unless mentioned otherwise, via YouTube/screengrab)

About the author:
Manisha Lakhe writes on films and TV shows, is a poet, teacher, traveller and mom (and not necessarily in that order). Could sell her soul for Pinot and a good cheesecake.

(Disclaimer: Views expressed in the above article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of OTTplay. The writer is solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.)