Ekkees Tareekh Shubh Muhurat 2018

Girdhari Lal Sharma, Sanjay Mishra, is the son of a priest living in Mathura who dreams of becoming a storyteller of mythological epics, but his craft struggles to find an audience. He has a daughter, Radha, and a son, Banwari, both at marriageable ages. Radha works as a schoolteacher and is in a relationship with Gopal, a young man from a well‑to‑do family. The one major hurdle standing in the way of their happiness is money, because Radha’s marriage date is fixed for the 21st of the month, giving them little time to secure the funds.

As the clock ticks, Girdhari scrambles to piece together the dowry, visiting relatives and friends who offer little help. A friend named Bulaki suggests a drastic, if morally murky, solution: use Banwari’s prospects to ease the financial burden. Banwari, who recently completed his exams for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), agrees to the risky plan if it can bring his sister’s happiness closer to reality. The stage is set for a double matchmaking scheme that could bend the rules of fate.

The search for brides leads them to Indrani, the mother of a young woman named Pankhuri who lives in Kolkata. Indrani arrives in Mathura with her daughter, and Banwari’s heart seems to respond to Pankhuri’s charms. Yet the bombshell comes when Indrani reveals a troubling truth: Pankhuri is a widow, and she demands a substantial dowry—25 Lakhs—to seal the union. Girdhari is taken aback by the revelation, but the mounting pressure to secure Radha’s marriage forces him to accept a deal he would otherwise reject. It is decided that both weddings would take place simultaneously, with the families moving forward under the same deadline.

The day of the weddings arrives, and Banwari’s IAS results are announced—he has cleared the exam, a twist that fills Girdhari with a renewed sense of possibility, albeit overshadowed by greed. To safeguard his plan, he enlists a local muscleman named Robdar [Brijendra Kala] to abduct his own son for a few hours around the wedding. The notion is that a brief disappearance might derail one ceremony and smooth the path for the other. But the plan goes awry when Robdar ends up abducting Gopal, Radha’s fiancé, who resists the kidnapping.

The attempt draws the attention of the town’s authorities in a slow, reluctant fashion. A police officer dismisses the early reports, suggesting the men have merely run off with someone else. Girdhari’s in‑law—Radha’s father‑in‑law—returns home, trying to calm the household while the abduction investigation crawls forward. Meanwhile, Robdar resists letting Gopal go, and he presses Radha’s father’s in‑laws to persuade Banwari’s new bride to become his, pushing a conflict that expands beyond two families.

As tensions rise, a local politician’s secretary visits Girdhari to express congratulations on Banwari’s success, and the politician himself soon intervenes. He commands action against the kidnapping and leverages political muscle to threaten Girdhari, urging him to secure a marriage between Banwari and a niece of the politician. The other side of the pressure comes from the politician’s associate, who hints that power can bend to the wedding clock if Girdhari can deliver the right vision for his children’s futures. Each threat tightens the noose around Girdhari’s conscience, and he hatches a daring, if ethically dubious, plan to keep both ceremonies intact.

To outmaneuver both the police and the politicians, Girdhari claims that Banwari has agreed to marry the politician’s own niece. He orchestrates a setup where Pankhuri becomes the face of the bride, the identity masked behind bridal attire. Robdar agrees to the swap and, with his crew, frees the other players by creating a scenario in which multiple marriages could be arranged to satisfy every power broker. The infiltration hinges on a careful deception: Radha’s room becomes a dressing chamber where several prospective brides are quietly restrained, with Pankhuri’s help to keep things under wraps as long as possible.

The ruse falters only when the truth surfaces. A police officer finally confronts the tangled web and reads a letter that Girdhari had prepared as part of his broader plan—an open confession of the scheme and the crimes committed in pursuit of the weddings. The letter exposes the truth behind the abductions, the disguises, and the manipulations that tied the entire town into a knot. Girdhari and Robdar are arrested, and the immediate crisis over the weddings dissolves into legal consequences.

Before leaving, Girdhari offers a blessing to Banwari and Pankhuri, a small act of grace amid the chaos he helped unleash. In a final twist of fate, the story shifts from a tale of coercive marriages and bargaining to a glimpse of fulfillment: inside a prison cell, Girdhari finally realizes his long‑held dream of storytelling, as prisoners gather and listen to his words with ardent attention, treating his narratives as a form of escape and meaning—even behind bars.

The film weighs the pull of tradition against personal ambition, the moral cost of desperation, and the redemptive spark that can appear in unlikely places. It remains a portrait of a man who pursues a dream through a maze of pressure, pride, and precarious alliances, ultimately discovering that storytelling has a power all its own to connect, comfort, and transform—even when the world around him is unraveling.