Kareena Mann is your classic eldest daughter, taking care of everything and everyone. She yearns for a good love story but spends most of her time restoring her late mother’s classic car. The morning of Kareena’s 30th birthday (which her grandmother and father forget), she finds out her dad is planning to sell her beloved childhood home. But he cuts her a deal: if she can find love in the next four months, she can have the house.
Enter TV doctor Dr. Prem Verma, who Kareena randomly meets at a bar. She’s smitten, but there’s a problem: Prem doesn’t believe in love. On their second meeting, things only get worse. The two have an explosive fight on Prem’s TV show, which goes viral and threatens his plans to recruit investors for a South Asian community health center. So Kareena and Prem come to an agreement: they’ll pretend to be engaged, so she can get the house and he can restore his donors’ faith in him. They’ll also ignore the burning attraction they have for each other. In this 2022 modern take on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Nisha Sharma tells a romantic story that also addresses misogynistic beliefs in some South Asian cultures about how women are expected to handle marriage, sex, and relationships.
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Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com