Manisha Koirala ties the knot

KATHMANDU: In a fairytale wedding, Bollywood actor Manisha Koirala tied the knot with Nepali businessman Samrat Dahal in a traditional Nepali ceremony on Saturday morning after an elaborate engagement and mehndi ceremony a day before.

The 40-year-old was wedded to the 33-year-old entrepreneur at the picturesque Le Meridien resort in Kathmandu.

Though her first ‘hero’ in Bollywood, Vivek Mushran, flew to Kathmandu to attend the four-day extravaganza, as did Manisha’s friend and director Deepti Naval, there was not much of a Bollywood presence besides Sunita, who stood in proxy for her husband Govinda.

There was also virtually no sign of the Nepali film industry that has impassively accepted her return almost after two decades. Manisha returned to the Nepali film industry a few months ago, playing wife to its superstar Rajesh Hamal.

Nepal’s bigwigs, including political heavyweights, were expected at the wedding feast on Sunday, to be held at the Soaltee Crowne Plaza hotel.

Bollywood director Subhash Ghai, who first launched the doe-eyed Manisha in Bollywood with Saudagar in 1991, had been invited.

The newlyweds plan to throw a separate bash for Bollywood stars in Mumbai, where Manisha will continue to keep a foothold.

Her plans for Nepal had included opening a film city in Kathmandu and persuading Bollywood to shoot more of its films in Nepal.

Dahal, an MBA from Texas, comes from a business family that is into education as well as leather goods.

He is involved in launching a bio-gas factory in Pokhara city, where Manisha did a little bit of shooting recently for her new Nepali film Dharma.

The alliance has plunged him from relative obscurity into the limelight, thanks to Manisha’s Bollywood career as well as family background.

She is the granddaughter of B P Koirala, Nepal’s first elected prime minister, and though she herself has not yet shown any inclination to join politics barring a misjudged campaign for deposed King Gyanendra’s government four years ago, her family boasts of three prime ministers, two deputy prime ministers and two members of parliament.

Manisha, who had been busy shooting in India less than a week before her wedding, has not made her future plans public as yet.

The couple will move out of Dahal’s family home for a pied-a-terre of their own.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2010.