Talaash- a search of your beliefs!!!

Waiting for a movie from the time since it first made news about its making is a much usual phenomenon for me when it comes out to be one of Aamir Khan's. And during all this waiting, avoiding every other news, previews, stills, scenes, etc is a completely deliberate act for me. For me, watching a movie without knowing a bit of it and being completely unprepared for whatever is coming on to you in the movie is the best preparation that one can have. Being unbiased about the storyline and everything is the key to a successful outing to a movie. This is something that I practiced for Talaash, the Aamir Khan starrer movie.

There are times (it has become somewhat frequent, these days, with newer breed of film-makers operating) in bollywood when you come out of the movie and you are not sure about how good or bad the movie was. You think over it, you recall the scenes, you relive the movie inside you and then you feel that it has started to grow inside you, and once that growth starts, its real hard to stop it from shaking you from the inside. Talaash is one such experience.

Talaash starts as a murder mystery in the form of a mysterious road accident that kills a leading film-maker drowned in the sea inside his car. The case comes to a police officer of high repute in his circle who starts the investigation and in the way of that meets different people, different situations and different circumstances leading him finally to the end of the mystery, the end that is not quite the end to the mystery only but also comes out to be an end to many of his questions. There is a point in the climax of the movie that it suddenly ceases to be a mystery thriller and becomes a psycho-social drama and the main plot of the murder mystery becomes a side plot of the movie. The best part of the movie to me was this transformation in the climax.

Talaash, is a not a story about the search of an intense, silent police inspector (Aamir Khan) disturbed with his son's death about a mysterious death, being helped in the process by a prostitute (Kareena Kapoor) and being questioned by a grieving mother and lone wife (Rani Mukherjee) for his over-indulgence and a suspected extra-marital affair in that search. It is the story of a father's search about the reality of his self-imposed guilt of being guilty of his own son's death. It is a story of a lone wife's search of her husband that she lost in a tragic accident that occurred to her family. It is a story of a couple coming in terms with their child's death finally and accepting it as an accident that was a fault of none.

The thing that confuses everyone in the end about whether the movie was good or bad is that in the end it leaves your mouths wide-open and minds confused with something that questions your belief system. This twist in the climax, as already said, was best part for me but must be difficult to swallow for many. This is the time when you realise that the plot that you were totally into for the last two hours was only the side plot and all the side plots of the story start to join themselves together one by one and becomes the main plot. This required a strong screenplay and thats what Talaash is all about.

Reema Kagti with her second directorial venture after Honeymoon Travels has lived upto and even crossed her own mark that she earlier set for herself. She, with Zoya Akhtar has provided a strong screenplay to their own story that is totally able to bind you to the seats for the total duration. Ram Sampath's music is more than just audible with a fairly nice lyrical work from Jawed Akhtar.

Aamir Khan as a moustached intense police inspector is once again redefining himself. His lack of smile, sleepless nights, crying with his guilt everything is lovable here. The scene where he is reliving the circumstances of his son's death and the alternatives that he could had done then is just brilliant. Rani Mukherjee with her non-glamourous, saree-clad housewife's role is telling you why she right there in top a few years back. The freckles on her face, the dark circles below her eyes make the theme of the movie totally alive. As one of my friend said that only after coming to Calcuta he actually realised the hidden sex-appeal a bengali woman holds inside her in her desi-looks, Rani Mukherjee with her looks in Talaash reminded us that she was also a bengali, a 'Bong-Bombshell' as we call them!!! Kareena Kapoor has also done total justice to her role and I don't think in present day breeds anybody else could have done it better than her. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is once again brilliant here with his 'bechara' role once again where he is beaten by everybody and in the end dies without doing anything. After Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur and Chittagong he has once again pulled back a great performance.

All in all, Talaash is not a great movie, not something that breaks records at the box-office with its glamour. Its a movie that hits you with its lack of glamour and still takes you away with itself into deep thoughts, into deep questions about your beliefs.

Doctors are not bad always!

Waiting for the date of joining and hence some engagements to come it’s hard to pass your time sitting just idly at home. Nothing to do and nobody to meet fills you with utter boredom. Being in such a situation where every day is like a Sunday, you tend to forget the importance of a Sunday and then don’t even wait for one. Things are almost similar to me at this very point of time, yet, I was looking for a Sunday today. The reason, well, was Satyamev Jayate, the TV show. The way it has created huge news with its few episodes only, the waiting is actually worth it. Being a fan of Aamir Khan adds to the praise for the show and hence to the waiting too. What actually turned out to be the most interesting was the fact that today’s episode was based on doctors, who have actually, in many ways, commercialized the profession and practice of medicine. Coming from the same profession is what made it the most interesting to me.

The episode was, indeed, apt on the situation that prevails in our profession at this point of time. Many a things that were shown in the show were, more or less, experienced and observed by me at different times. Be it the needless operation of a leg abscess leading to amputation of a toe or the commissions demanded from the pathologists or other fellow practitioners in return for the references or the corruption prevailing in MCI (Medical Council of India) or the overpricing of drugs, everything is too very known to people in my profession and as well as to the general public. These are some of the evils that the profession has adopted as a cost to its commercialization. I am not supporting it. No, only trying to find out where, actually, it came from.

The episode dealt with certain cases where a surgery was performed even without the need of it. The doctor performed that only for the purpose of inflating the hospital bills. No doubt, it happens in our society at such a rate that if really studied, almost 20-25% of all surgeries performed will come out to be needless. In other words every one in four or five surgeries are kind of fake. Shocking, as it may sound, but indeed it is a fact that needs to be stated and needs to be confessed by every person in my profession. Having said all this, one should also remember and notice the fact that each such story in the episode, where there was one ‘commercialized’ version of a doctor, there was one doctor also who was firm in his opinion that what was being done was wrong. My point here is that not all the doctors are from the same league as the ‘commercialized’ one. To every one of them there are, still, tens of ‘true’ doctors in our society. So, the profession as a whole cannot and should not be blamed for this.

The part of the episode that dealt with the issue of dichotomy of fees was the most important issue that the show raised. Indeed, in return for the references that a doctor sends to a radiologists or pathologists for the purpose of investigations and also in return for the referrals that doctor sends to his fellow colleague, the doctor demands a cut, a percentage of the fee. This is a grave situation, no doubt. And this is also not something that people don’t know. They, the public, know it. We, the doctors, know it. This is something like bribery that is ruining the whole system of the country. Nothing much can be done to get free from this evil, except for raising the awareness. Nobody can clear the conscience of the whole society, it can only be done by clearing own conscience and that’s what is needed here. We have to have a firm conviction that we are not going to indulge in such practice. Raising our morality and changing the mentality to pureness is what we require to do. This is one of the simplest ways of how we can lower the monetary burden of the poor patients and we, the professionals, must come forward for this.

The issue of the MCI is not only an issue, it’s a scandal, maybe, a bigger scandal than the 2G spectrum or the Commonwealth Games scandal. But on this very issue these are not the doctors that are to be blamed. The main perpetrators of this scandal are the education mafias of our country who are running the various private medical colleges. They offer bribe to the MCI officials, they pay the doctors to pretend to be their faculty members and in return get the recognition to run the courses in their college. This is similar to anything and everything that, more or less, is running in all the sectors. It’s not only the matter of health sector and hence, should not be taken as particularly against doctors as taken in the show. The project manager of a dam in construction receives bribe from the contractors, the police department gets their cut from the ransom money of kidnappings, the DM has his/her share from all the relief funds. All these things are one and the same. Being rich in no time is the basic idea behind all of it and hence the MCI issue also should not be taken as a different issue, afterall, doctors are also human beings like the engineers, or the police officers, or the DM.

Lastly, the drug overpricing issue. The episode blames the doctors that they don’t prescribe the generic medicine that come as much as ten times cheaper than the branded medicine that they do prescribe. The show took an example from the state of Rajasthan where these generic medicine are being used. Maybe, the Satyamev Jayate team was a little short on its research on this. We in Bihar too have been distributing these generic drugs at all the government hospitals for over 5-6 years now. As far as our experience goes here (of the last 5-6 years of this and even before as I come from a family full of doctors), these generic drugs are not as effective as the branded ones. A same company manufactures both a generic and a branded version of the same molecule and the price range is completely different on them. The generic drugs, maybe due to government regulations, have to be cheaper and hence, maybe this is the fact why the companies don’t manufacture it with the same intent that they do with the branded ones. The generics are known for their ineffectiveness in treating a patient and I, as a doctor, would never prefer something that I have experienced ineffectiveness of to treat my patient even if it comes free to them. But then, the drug overpricing is a real problem that should be dealt strongly with. Maybe, a stronger regulation of taxes and price of the drugs from the government is what is needed the most.

In the end, I must here reiterate the fact that not all of us doctors are the business tycoons that the society has now started to think us like. I admit that there are some people who are doing things that should not be done but then they only make a small percentage of the whole population. Everyone of us doctors want to treat poor patients free of cost but then most of our patients are these poor ones so how would we get our living from them. The amount of time and labour that we put in the rigorous studies before becoming a successful practitioner is not only for getting to be known as the ‘god on earth’. We don’t want to become one. We want to be human beings only. We want to use our skills that we acquire with so much of pain and labour in helping others but then we have stomachs of our own and our families too that need to be filled. Doctor as a profession has been the most respectable profession ever in our society and it will remain to be one. The onus is now on us ourselves to make it as respectable as it ever was.

Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai diaries)

Its really been a long time since I wrote my last post here. I started this blog with much determination but was totally without any idea of how I was going to be regular on here. There were a few books that I had to read and a few films that I had to watch, and hence with a slight (may be recurrently transient) inclination towards English, I started this blog. I couldn't finish those books through this time and, although, managed to watch those movies, just couldn't get enough time to spare here. Maybe, sometimes, career has to be put ahead of hobby, I suppose. Anyways, with no more boring stuff let me come straight to the point.
Dhobi Ghat, Mumbai Diaries......what was it, story of the city mumbai, story of the four characters, story of the character mumbai, story of their life or just Kiran Rao's experiment with film-making? What it really was? It was nothing, but a simple way of story-telling. The telling of the stories of the four lives, stories which does not start with their start or doesn't end at their ends. It starts from somewhere, at some point in their life and all of a sudden, after almost 95 mins, ends abruptly at some another point in their life downstream.
We in India have been watching movies that take somebody as a central character and then just take us through either the whole life right from its birth to the end or through a special episode in that life. Dhobi Ghat is completely different on this aspect (and, by the way, also on many other aspects). The original notion of bollywood of making films based on characters having quite an eventful life is being challenged here with this very simple, yet very different art form. Most of us, common people, take birth and die, and in between lead just an uneventful life. Dhobi Ghat is just about a small passing by part of such uneventful lives of four characters.
Arun (Aamir Khan) is a painter by profession, a loner by attitude and a question for everybody who comes in contact with him, including the audience. He has serious problems with relationships, is a divorcee, loves to live alone and has no one really to talk or rather doesn't like to talk to anybody. His only acquaintance is Yasmeen (Kriti Malhotra), a small town girl who comes to Mumbai as a newly wed and is busy in exploring Mumbai and making videos for her brother. She is the only one who manages to arouse interest in Arun's lonely head that too through her video tapes that Arun just finds serendipitously.
Shai (Monica Dogra) is a investment banker in America who is on her Sabbatical and is exploring Mumbai just for the sake of her hobby, photography. She manages to have a one-night stand with Arun (who denied any prospect of a long term relationship out of this), and then manages to find Munna (Prateik Babbar), a neighbourhood dhobi and starts exploring Mumbai. Shai sees the different characters of the city with Munna's eyes. Munna is a migrant from Bihar, who has a deep feeling for but is hesitant of any kind of relationship with Shai.
To say that the movie is all about these four characters and their interaction with Mumbai is totally wrong. Its nothing about it. After so many featurette released, so many of interviews of the film-makers watched, one enters the cinema hall with a clear-cut idea in his mind that there is gonna be a completely different experience inside. And yet, one walks out of the theatre dumb-struck. Nothing to think, nothing to say, no opinion, no views. Thats the real beauty of the movie. It manages to keep its "differentness" even after your expectations of differentness is at its highest level.
To say that the movie is completely flawless is totally untrue. The characters of Shai and, even, Munna, are a bit beyond understandings for me although Prateik Babbar as Munna has showed real glimpse of his immense talent in acting. Although, the cinematography is fabulous, editing could have been a lot better. The biggest reason why the movie is not gonna be liked by masses in India is the story of the movie, because there is not any. We, the masses in India, have watched the Johars and the Chopras so much that we only think of their stories to be STORIES although, they attack haplessly on our emotions. For those who keep themselves in 'intellectual' category, the stories of films from recent years who have promised to be different like Udaan or Dasvidaniya are the stories to look for, although, they attack on us emotionally. Dhobi Ghat with its complete novice idea does not attack at all. It, now, might define the 'intellectual' category amongst the movie-goers in India.
Marissa Bronfman writes about the movie and about its premiere at Toranto International Film Festival at The Huffington Post. Excerpts:

"There were no choreographed dance sequences, no lip-synched songs, so while Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries) may not have been a typical Bollywood blockbuster, it is paving the way for a new era in Indian cinema to emerge without sacrificing it's heart along the way.....At its world premiere in Toronto, Dhobi Ghat showed the world that Indian cinema is no longer stuck making homelessly formulaic films and that the industry is growing up and starting to experiment with different characters and narratives."

Well, all in all, Dhobi Ghat is a wonderful collage of faces on the canvas of life which does not end. It goes on. There are no resolutions in the end, there are no morals too. Just like it starts from somewhere, it ends at somewhere abruptly, maybe because, it has no end, maybe because life has no end. It moves on, it goes on and on and on...