The Audience must have witnessed the 26/11 terrorist stories quite a few times on the screen already but Filmmaker Nikhil Advani took a completely new turn with his Drama Mumbai Diaries depicting the story from a complete medical perspective.
On being asked what made him do a story like this, this is what Nikhil has to say –
“I wanted to tell the stories of the doctors, the nurses, the medical staff, the ward boys, the surgeons of the government hospitals. My only idea was to director something depicting the medical and hospitals lives but during my research for the government hospital, I got to know about this largest hospital in the world. They charge zero money from their patients, the doctors are 24*7 available, they’ve close to 1200+ beds and nearly 300+ patients are admitted daily.”
The doctors there not only treat the people from slums or just drug addicts but there are also several cases of murders, accidents & domestic violence that they treat.
The doctors are doing a great job with full dedication but I think there’s a lot of lack of facilities that include the infrastructure.
This is where the idea of making a medical drama came from, during this entire process of learning & researching I thought let’s not only show a normal day but a day that took the city to a complete halt.
I always wanted to tell the story of the hospitals not the story of 26/11 but while writing the script it went onto getting bigger.
I realized sometimes people who are trying to heal us are already fighting a battle in their own lives and regardless of all their personal pain they continue to heal us, this was the pitch of my show.
You know all these frontline workers like Doctors, nurses, policemen, their families, we didn’t even know what all they were going through when the city was at standstill.
While fighting the battle for the people of Mumbai, they were going through so much already, this is what my show revolves around.
And now since this was the first time something like a medical drama was coming into Indian media, it was very challenging for me & the entire team, I didn’t want anyone to point a finger & say that my actors do not look like real doctors or this looks like fake acting so all my Actors went for a special Medical Workshop under Dr Sheikh.
Konkona, Satyajeet, Mohit & all the nurses learned how to treat open wounds & Stitch people’s arms. Not only did stitching they had to learn A to Z about the medicines, they even know how to do a spinal surgery & revive someone.
I wanted them to speak like real doctors and not like actors who’ve gone through some script or are reading dialogues. The audience will see all the hard work when they’ll see the show I hope.
Mumbai Diaries, the series depicting the story of the government hospital during the 26/11 terrorist attack at the Taj Hotel, is released today on Amazon Prime.
Konkona Sen Sharma, Satyajeet Dubey, Mohit Raina, Natasha Bharadwaj, Tina Desai, Mrunmayee Deshpande & Shreya Dhanwanthary are seen in the leads.