Leave and Come Back

When Simran reunites with her estranged family for the first time in seven years for her cousin’s two-week long wedding, drama is already at a high, thanks to her overbearing aunt, the type-A bride, and her favorite person, her other cousin Kavitha, completely icing her out. The last thing she needs is her new boyfriend, charming, easy-going Leo, to show up uninvited—but he does and immediately gets on the wrong side of family matriarch Veena.

To avoid a crisis in the midst of this wedding with multiple events and four hundred attendees, the cousins come up with a scheme copped from their favorite Bollywood movie, DDLJ: Simran and Leo will pretend to be strangers so he can win over Veena aunty, the rest of the family, and the always-watching community, before they reveal they are a couple.

Of course, hijinks ensue; but more unexpectedly, Simran finds that she’s connecting to a version of herself she thought she’d lost as a teenager, when her parents tragically passed away. As old grievances resurface, and new secrets are revealed, Simran will have to find a way to heal her wounds or risk losing the possibility of a happy future with Leo and her family.

Part family drama, part romantic comedy, LEAVE AND COME BACK pairs the fizzy delight of a Bollywood movie with nuanced explorations of falling in love, grief, and estrangement.