Cast: Mohit Raina, Konkona Sensharma, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Natasha Bharadwaj, Tina Desai, Satyajeet Dubey, Mrunmayee Deshpande, Prakash Belawadi

Directed By: Nikkhil Advani

BLUF: In Bombay General Hospital the injured victims of the Mumbai blasts are admitted as are the terrorists, in custody who caused those deaths. The story revolves around a group of doctors on duty during those hours, the underlying politics of the hospital, the relationship with cops and the humanity or inhumanity of the people.

THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES: Hospital dramas may not be the forte of Indian makers. This story revolves around the life and decisions of maverick surgeon who has less respect for protocol than jaded cops and people in the administration of the hospital who want to control the proceedings.

Kaushik Oberoi (Mohit Raina) is antagonized with his seniors and law enforcement as they judge him over his lack of respect for proper doctor etiquette and protocol and not his work. If you have watched medical dramas, you would imagine that the whole premise of a trauma surgery ward is high stakes drama and high-octane thrills.

As the bodies keep coming in through out the series, the personal professional equation and the stakes for personal relationships all work in tandem between the doctors, the media, the law enforcement, the victims, and the hostages.

The first few scenes of Mumbai Diaries 26/11 are the epitome of superficial filmmaking interspersed with the scenes just before the shootout at Leopold’s Café and almost those templatized scenes of every terror show or movie.

FWAR/ IN THE KNOW

Dr Sahil Aggarwal (Mishal Raheja) says the templatized “Hum doctor hain, bhagwaan nahi.” (We are doctors, not gods) and stops just short of saying “ Inko dawa se zyada dua ki zaroorat hai”

For some reason even though the human tragedy was well filmed, the pace of a trauma ward, the tempo of urgency was missing in most scenes after the initial templates.

In most hospital sequences, the light, camera work, frames are perfectly done. The anger, the human spite, the undercurrents of class divide between the haves and have nots, the  Hindus and the Muslims, the connected and the not so connected, the cops and the others, the ones who are saving lives by warding guns and the ones doing that same very thing with a scalpel, the ones who can shape a narrative and the ones who become the target of those stories.

 Konkona Sensharma is consistently outstanding as Chitra Das, a non-practicing doctor who is the head of Social Services at Bombay General and a PTSD persona herself.

Even with is lose ends and some lazy writing, the series is a good watch. The last episodes become racy and keep the audience hooked till the end.

The characters are human and very traumatized. Yet on top of all these gaps, the actors strive to deliver. Though the end of series “everything repairs itself” thesis kills the humanity of it. The Muslim haters become lovers, the antagonist cops start respecting doctors, the Muslim doctor redeems all the Muslim community by helping capture the Pakistani Muslims. How does trauma make these changes in people? It’s almost unrealistic to have golden characters emerge in the aftermath of a crises.

The only saving grace was the fact that the scrupulous journalist Mansi Hirani (Dhanwanthary) who gave away to the terrorists the location of their buddies arrested to ultimately initiate the attack on the Bombay General hospital did not change her colors.

Are there not rules and regulations that govern the behavior of media in India?

Impressive work, nevertheless.

WHAT WE LOVED

Mohit Raina

Konkana

Overall template

WHAT WE MISSED

Story in parts

Too templatized

Predictive