The essential Munnabhai

Dr. Govind Hoskeri

“I am a part of wherever I have been.”

D H Lawrence

There is a Munnabhai in all of us, from Mumbai to Malgudi. Even if he does not become a doctor, Munnabhai becomes a good human being. That is the story of Munnabhai. At every level, the story revolves around this theme. Only that, it has been pasteurised in the hot spicy Mumbaiya lingo. In as much as there is laughter in it, an enormous amount of oriental philosophy also has gone into the making of Munnabhai.

Under the facade of all the fun and frolic, there lies the Indian soul in turmoil, seeking freedom from misery and the mire of mundane existence. One may not believe that more than two years of serious research in the philosophy of Indian medical education has gone into making of Munnabhai.

How did all this begin?

I had just started contributing to Express Healthcare Management. One of the first few articles that I wrote was on ‘Understanding the Indian Doctor’ published in the issue 15-31 May 2001. It was displayed on the wallpaper of our department, the department of anatomy, Seth G S Medical College and K E M Hospital, Mumbai. One hot and humid, yet to rain, sweltering, Mumbai afternoon, I saw two gentlemen peering into the article and making a note or two. Later in the day they happened to meet me. One of them was the director of Munnabhai MBBS. And thus began a long association.

We talked and kept on talking. “Never make a teacher talk or else you will repent.” (There must be an old saying to that effect somewhere). They must have felt so that day. But then a teacher has the knack of doing so. It is the question of his survival. In any case they have not confided the ‘teacher effect’ of my barrage on them on the very first day itself. They told me the script and the storyline, and as they kept on doing so frame-by-frame, it was not difficult for me to visualise it on the silver screen as a final product.

I have been trained in dramatics and histrionics since childhood. Appreciation of most of the forms of fine arts has been one of my hobbies. Film appreciation had come into focus when I had interviewed Mani Kaul for a weekly magazine, way back in the early seventies. The interview had continued from around 8 pm till the wee hours of the night and at one stage Mr Mani Kaul wondered as to whether it was a doctor who was interviewing him.

He later had extended an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Film Institute of Pune on Guru Dutt. I could not do so, since I shifted my base to Mumbai, in search of further academic pursuit. With the original team and later with some young minds, who had a specialised training in mass media, we evolved ourselves into a team that went into every little detail.

Details like the uniforms worn by the matrons and sister nurses for instance. While training myself in my amateur schooling days of dramatics and histrionics, I had been taught the basic tenet of how to be a silent spectator of every little detail of the intricacies and mannerisms of human form, to understand the basics of acting.

It has helped me tremendously in my profession as well, as it is necessary for a doctor to observe every little detail of human face and form, so that even a twitch of one muscle fiber gives away the pain, even in the most stoic of the stoic persons.

My observations on the ambience that prevails in Indian medical colleges, including the usual haunts and habitats of the students, their teething problems, their growing pangs, cataclysms of ‘physiologic heart attacks’ peculiar to the age group, resulting in pining down the lovers lanes that are famous in most of the medical colleges, their moments of glory and their moments of despair, their idols and their ideologies or lack of ideologies and all that happens at every stage in their sojourn through the college days, was virtually dissected.

That the hero had to have a haircut to enter into medical college, was not a mere act of cutting his hair but the dawn of a will to become a doctor also. And so was the effect of a haircut on the ‘vegetative state of coma with open eyes’, the alter ego of Munnabhai, eliciting an instant ‘ah’ from the audience, as much as a connoisseur of music would appreciate a taan by Pandit Bhimsen Joshi with a rendering of ‘Kya baat hai’, with a neck breaking nod of appreciation, either because of the knowledge of classical music or pure lack of it...

One day, we were discussing the history of anatomy and I was recounting the story of Hare and Burke and their efforts in ‘creating dead bodies’ to be made available for dissection purposes in their days. The original idea of the script in providing Munnabhai with a dead body of his own, for dissection, is a statement of those days but with the today’s legal standing.

The dead body comes alive and the possible rustication proceedings against Munnabhai as a medical student, the very next day itself, was overcome. Even at this outrage also he could have been thrown out of the college. But then the audience that come to see Munnabhai continue to remain and regale them. Remember the bearded legendary batsman, W G Grace, who practiced medicine, got out clean bowled the first ball once, but, as the story goes, held the crease and told the bowler to keep on bowling.

When asked why, he is quoted to have said that the people gather to see him bat, not everyone can do that, can you? This episode in the dissection hall is also a statement, a statement on the problem of dire scarcity of dead bodies, available for dissection, in most of the medical colleges, even today.

The subtle changes in the attitude and language, as he goes through his stint in the medical college in Munnabhai, are achieved even in the fast clip of the movie. As one of my colleagues puts it, Munnabhai needs to be seen “with your dura mater firmly holding whatever matter is inside your cranium, inside the theatre”, contrary to the common feeling that people are supposed to enter the movie hall after depositing their brains at the ticket counter.

It has been reviewed that the role of the heroine is a limited one but if one were to realise the fact that she was the pivotal desire, which threw the main challenge of the theme of Munnabhai, the perspective changes. There is no equivalent word for Ichhashakti in English. Motivation is nearest word. Munnabhai got motivated to get the heroine and chooses the route of becoming a doctor to do...Hell bar the way.

For Munnabhai, slitting the throat of a live human being because of criminal intentions is a matter of ‘bole toh, game baja de’, one of the catch phrases in Hindi filmi slang for cold-blooded murder. But ‘Em bole toh’, in the dissection hall he faints. Here his scalpel is not a rampuri, a knife popular with criminals in India, but a tool of dissection. Shooting of this sequence required great sensitivity and due care was repeatedly cautioned.

Misrepresentation of medical facts is easily the best thing that has happened in most of the movies. This is due to inadequate medical backup. When I wrote about it in the article ‘Medical economics in the era of Devdas’, an opinion was aired via e-mail, expecting movies with such backup. It had never occurred to me that I might be cast in such a role one day. I hope I have lived up to my role.

There is a feeling that the teachers are not shown with due respect. We need to remember that the teachers and the students, at any given time, form a cross section of the society. Art forms do have to exaggerate to make inroads into the minds of society.

Recent spate of paper leaks is a testimony to the fact. Although we had smelt it long ago, it is being unearthed only now. Please note that I am not defending the ‘Munnabhai approach’ of abduction ad extortion into gaining admission to a medical college. No art form is complete without some reference to autobiographic element and as far as some of the medical facts depicted in the movie are concerned, I must say, I had the fortune to have lived them. They were my own experiences.

The two minds behind the cinematic exposition of this script are experts in two different worlds. Rajkumar Hirani, an exponent in the field of advertising and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a seasoned producer of films of calibre. If have to ascribe the success of this movie, it is due to a blend of relatable strengths of these two different worlds.

The world of advertising, where one has to express every thing in a thirty second slot. The world of films has to hold the attention of the audience rivetted to the storyline for three hours. That has been easily accomplished by the art of making a film out of such individual frames, without the taxing effects of flashbacks and other special effects. It was just a question of providing continuity to the surreal effects of advertising frame by frame into a sartorial dimension of a full-length film.

Empathy towards human suffering is the biggest conversion in an erstwhile etiology of human suffering, the mean and muscle flexing Munnabhai. Embracing a cancer patient has come natural to Sanjay Dutt. It must have pleased Sunil Dutt no end. May be, the memory of late Nargis Dutt must have lived in those tender moments. I see that in their eyes, and if I have done it throughout the duration of Munnabhai with misty eyes, crying my heart out with laughter, to live for yet another day, every day... it has been worth it.

The writer is associate professor, anatomy, Seth G S Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai. E-mail: hoskeri@rediffmail.com