The first season of Mumbai Diaries got all its chosen elements right—a high-strung medical drama set in a hospital, when the 26/11 terrorist attacks took place. One of the targets of the gunmen was a government hospital—which is the model for the one in the series– and the other places hit were around the same vicinity in south Mumbai, so all the horror that unfolds in the show, actually happened, and viewers across the country watched on their TV screens.
That kind of assault on a city not just transforms it, but leaves long-term scars on the memory. It was impossible to replicate the factual and emotional wallop of the incident in another web series, so, Mumbai Diaries Season 2, directed by Nikkhil Advani, cannot help but be a let down.
The same location, Bombay General Hospital under the administration of Dr Subramaniam (Prakash Belawadi), most of the characters return, and find themselves caught in pointless shenanigans– packed within 24 hours, timelines and locations helpfully provided. The star doctor Kaushik Oberoi (Mohit Raina) is still trying to clear his name after being accused of medical negligence in the last show, for trying to save a terrorist instead of a wounded cop. The big crisis this time is the 26/7 rainstorm that flooded large sections of Mumbai, but is way lower in dramatic scales than a brazen terrorist attack. A fictional cataclysm might actually have worked better than a real one that residents of Mumbai barely remember, never mind the rest of the country. There is also the fact that floods actually happened a few years before the 26/11, so there is some dramatic license taken.
When the camera moves outside the hospital, there are scenes of torrential rains and traffic jams, but the patients who the harried doctors, the omnipresent head nurse Mrs Cherian (Balaji Gauri) and the social services officer Chitra (Konkona Sen Sharma) have to deal with, are not directly affected by the floods. There is a lot of talk of overcrowding and chaos and the possibility of a leptospirosis outbreak, but that is hardly visible.
In the last season, three resident interns had joined the hospital—granddaughter of the founder, Diya (Natasha Bharadwaj), overwrought Sujata (Mrunmayee Deshpande) and Ahaan (Satyajeet Dubey), they wander around the hospital randomly, doing vague medical tasks. Cinematic licence is all very well but the lack of basic authentic detailing is galling. Junior Sujata decides on her own to perform a complicated brain surgery on a child, without even a properly prepared operation theatre.
A senior surgeon reportedly cannot reach the hospital because of the rains, but Sujata leaves her post in a supposed emergency situation to go to a children’s home to rescue a victim of child abuse, and makes it back! Dr Oberoi rushes off in an ambulance to hunt for his pregnant wife (Tina Desai), who almost drowned in the flood, finds her in the mayhem to the chawl where she was taken by kindly residents and brings her to the hospital. Suddenly, an obstetrician (Ridhi Dogra) is conjured up and then vanishes.
Anyone who has ever been to a hospital even on a normal day would find many doctors barely paying attention to admitted patients, but Diya has all the time in the world to counsel a burns victim, who is a transgender (Samaresh Das) and his troubled parents. A cop (Sanjay Narwekar), who would have been on the beat when the city is “drowning”, spends the whole day either terrorizing that family or forcing a nurse to steal drugs to sell in the black market. Nobody seems to notice or care!
A UK delegation is visiting the hospital and who should waltz in but Chitra’s abusive husband Dr Saurav (Parambrata Chattopadhyay); their tawdry sniping and domestic violence flashbacks takes up too much footage in the show that barely keeps its head above the haphazardly swirling water.
Cutting away from here frequently, the show visits seemingly the only news channel in the city, covering the floods, while “star anchor” Mansi (Shreya Dhanwanthary) would rather crucify Dr Oberoi.
The power shuts down at some point, and a chunk of the series is shot (by Malay Prakash) in the semi-dark, with candles, torches, and emergency fluorescent tubes as light sources. But lab reports and scans materialize instantly and surgery is performed in unsanitary conditions. Any hospital where one doesn’t hear the words, “Go to accounts and pay a deposit,” only exists in a fairy tale.
Season 2 of Mumbai Diaries (written by Yash Chetija and Persis Sodawaterwala, with dialogue by Sanyukta Chawla Shaikh) is just scattershot in execution and dreary to watch as Season 1 was gripping. The production design (Priya Suhass) is meticulous and among the crowd of actors, Prakash Belawadi, Mohit Raina and Parambrata Chattopadhyay stand out for making some sense of the parts they play. The others flail around looking confused, which was probably the instruction they were given.
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
