The notion of love at first sight, so often trivialized, finds its purest incarnation in a single glance, the way Shah Rukh Khan looks at his beloved. And never more arresting than in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, where Karan Johar, maestro of excess and emotion, distils time into one charged moment. He does not ease into it. Instead, he strikes with his smash cuts. His camera knows no restraint. It circles the leads, capturing them from every impossible angle. An aerial hush, a creeping track-in, a mid-shot trembling at the edges, a close-up that forgets to breathe. Every composition is a scaffold, leading toward an apex of recognition. When comes the deceleration, the world holds its breath. Slow motion bleeds into the scene not as a gimmick, but as the only pace possible for a heart adjusting to the unbearable beauty of Kajol’s presence. Khan sees her; he really sees her. His body, unbidden, begins to sway, a shoulder lifting as if the music has entered him before the soundtrack dares to. A smile surfaces. His eyes close at the end, in pure reverence. I believed, for years, that nothing could match this, that no filmmaker would dare approach its myth. But then Shazia Iqbal, in her formidable debut Dhadak 2, does not attempt to replicate. Instead, she confronts, both by honouring the gaze and by seeking to reshape it. Perhaps that’s why her frame is no longer about adoration from afar, but about encounter. Perhaps that’s why, where Johar built fantasy, she forges truth, aiming to correct not just perspective, but also power. And perhaps that’s why she does not outdo the magic but simply transcends its limitations. Dhadak 2 opens in a register uncannily familiar. A girl dances to drum beats. A boy watches, distant, transfixed. But there is a whole degree of subversion that takes place. Because this time, it is not his gaze that introduces her. It is hers that finds him. Vidhi (Tripti Dimri), an upper-caste girl, catches sight of Neelesh (Siddhant Chaturvedi), the Dalit boy in the back, steady hands on the drum, part of the Bhim Baja Dhol Boys. And when his eyes finally meet hers, she does not look away. This moment alters the entire grammar of the representation. It tears through the tired fabric of mainstream Bollywood romance, where the gaze has always been a one-way current: the man looks, the woman glows. The man desires, the woman receives. The man moves, the woman is moved. Also Read | Triptii Dimri and Siddhant Chaturvedi’s Dhadak 2 seethes with the rage of filmmaker Shazia Iqbal Here, the politics shift completely. The gaze becomes dialogic. She sees him, and in doing so, permits him to be seen as a person. It is a small act, but radical in its implications, because in a mainstream cinematic tradition that always scrubs caste from love, Dhadak 2 insists on bringing it into frame. After all, in this version, Iqbal insists that love does not float above politics, it is shaped by it, bruised by it, and still insists on blooming. This, precisely this, is what Srishti Walia, a doctoral scholar of Cinema Studies at JNU, articulates with precision when she describes this very moment: "There is no singularity of gaze, it is non-linear, circular, moving between prospective lovers." What the opening of Dhadak 2 also accomplishes is a rewriting of the very politics of Pariyerum Perumal, the film it officially adapts. The original, though urgent and necessary, was shadowed by an evidently underwritten female protagonist, a figure too inert, too hollowed out, to hold narrative weight. Her silence, far from resonant, felt evacuated of agency. However, here, from its first beat, Iqbal hands Vidhi not just the right to look, but the audacity to choose where, and how, she will place that look. She is not a passive vessel moved by the tide of caste and love. She sees the structure and dares to gaze beyond it. Her vision becomes volition. Her desire, radical. And in that act, of seeing, of returning the gaze, of claiming visual authorship, she dismantles the hierarchy that has long shaped who gets to desire, and who merely gets desired. This is not just reimagining. It can very much be read as a reclamation. Another significant thing Shazia does with the opening is her decision to interrogate the myth of Khan; an imagery built by the likes of Johar and Aditya Chopra. So, when Neelesh appears, drum strapped to his body, you’re immediately reminded of Raj Aryan from Mohabbatein. There too, the music was born out of rebellion, for the cause of love. Iqbal knows this mythology well, so perhaps that’s why, we see a poster of Khan in Neelesh’s cramped home, much later in the film. It’s not just any poster, it's Yash Chopra’s Veer Zaara, where Khan played another man who loved across boundaries drawn by nation, religion, and history. It opens up multiple readings: perhaps Neelesh, like many across the country, has grown up watching Khan and absorbed his promises. That love is enough, that sincerity dissolves barriers. Maybe he even believes that with the right amount of devotion, he too can escape the gravity of his identity. What he doesn't yet grasp is that in naya bharat, even Khan is endangered, for the name he carries. Opening Act is a column where Anas Arif breaks down some of the greatest opening scenes in film and television.
