I was born into a family of doctors. In school I realised I had more than a dozen classmates who had a doctor as a parent. Conversations at home, over a landline phone, at doctors’ parties or wedding receptions would veer towards a medical discussion. There was none to blame for the lack of a conversation piece.
There wasn’t much to purchase and show off in the 1980s. Foreign travel was expensive, there were two or three brands of cars or watches and one state TV broadcaster. The best source of entertainment was watching movies recorded on video cassettes, brought into the country by friends and family or borrowed from a neighbourhood video library pirate. Renting three such cassettes over the weekend cost ₹20 in Mangaluru.
Movies were a two-hour escape from the routine and pressures at school/college, entrance tests and later at work. Over a period of 30 years I watched a lot of “medical movies”. Movies on neuro-developmental issues ( Children of a Lesser God, My Left Foot ), and on treatment breakthroughs for a neuro-degenerative disease ( Awakenings , with the role of the doctor played masterfully by Robin Williams). I loved watching Leonardo De Caprio battle the inner demons ( Shutter Island ). Girl Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest dealt with mental health issues. Themes based on sporting injuries ( Concussion ) portrayed how sporting syndicates and associations can try to suppress facts on the health risk of contact sports. Coma and The Constant Gardener brought out the dark side of organ donation and drug trials, respectively.
There are spin-offs too: doctor-turned-revolutionary ( The Motorcycle Diaries ), and doctor-ego ( Malice ). There are numerous movies on communicable bacterial diseases ( Cassandra Crossing ) and transmittable viral diseases ( 28 Weeks Later, Contagion, Dallas Buyers Club, IamLegend, Philadelphia ).
Closer to home, there have been movies which have tried to engage topics of medical importance. Tare Zameen Par (dyslexia), ageing disorder progeria ( Paa ), autism ( Barfi ), blindness and Alzheimer’s disease ( Black ), and post-accident paralysis ( Guzaarish ). Some screenplays have bordered on the comical and the absurd, such as the blood transfusion scene in Amar Akbar Antony . There have been TV series, in India ( Lifeline ) and in the U.S. (Grey’s Anatomy, E.R, MASH), to name a few, which have either over-dramatised or glamorised the medical field. Celebrity tele-doctor and neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta of CNN oversimplified brain surgery with his controversial coverage of surgeries during the Iraq war in 2003 and the Nepal earthquake in 2015.
But then there are movies like Anand . This movie was released in 1971 and was way ahead of its time. There is a lot to learn from this movie and it never fails to disappoint me whenever I watch it. First on jumpy VCR tapes, later on scratchy CDs and now on streaming video. Most of us remember the movie for the twister diagnosis of lymphosarcoma of the intestine.
There is Dr. Bhaskar, a brooding cancer specialist, played by Amitabh Bachchan, who deals with his patients with a brusque “know- it-all” attitude. The most memorable scenes come 20 minutes into the movie. The cold interaction between Dr. Bhaskar and his anxious, confused and ailing patients. The manner in which he breaks news of the terminal cancer to Anand, played by Rajesh Khanna, is a case study for any doctor in training.
Then there’s Dr. Kulkarni, Bhaskar’s friend who doesn’t flinch when charging rich patients an exorbitant fee for treating their imagined illnesses while he smokes with abandon in his clinic. He does so to provide for treatment of chronic infections such as tuberculosis in patients with no financial resources.
But what is striking is the unmistakable sublimation of Anand to his terminal illness, based on a biopsy report and interpreted on a barium X-ray. Addressing Dr. Bhaskar, Anand says, “Babumoshai, life should be great, not long”.
There are five stages to acceptance of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We go through at least a few of these stages when we encounter adverse news.
As a child I often wondered why doctors, celebrated or otherwise, young or grey-haired, discussed with hung heads anecdotal cases at cricket matches, picnics or over beverage at receptions. Looking back, they too were achieving a rapid five-stage closure.
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