6 October 2020

Out of syllabus

My Mirror column, the second in a series on films about doctors:

Ek Doctor Ki Maut
's questions about the life of science seem even more urgent three decades later, in the year of the coronavirus


 

The sharpest revelation in Ek Doctor Ki Maut comes sheathed in a conversation that's almost funny. A reputed Kolkata paper has just published the news that the film's titular protagonist, Dr Dipankar Roy (Pankaj Kapur), has created a vaccine for leprosy. The report also mentions that one of the interesting possible side-effects of the new vaccine might be to reverse female sterility. The news causes a stir: Dr Arijit (Vijayendra Ghatge), who is Dipankar's classmate and childhood friend, receives a visit from a senior gynaecologist called Dr Ramanand (Vasant Choudhury). Settling into a chair in Dr Arijit's chamber, Dr Ramanand launches into a tirade against what he considers Dr Dipankar's audacious bluff. How can an ordinary MBBS, a doctor in a government hospital with no private practice or fancy degree – like Ramanand or Arijit – have invented a world-altering vaccine? But Ramanand's suspicions about Dipankar reach their crescendo when he turns to Arijit, volume dropping slightly to convey his absolute horror: “Jaante ho, woh gaana gaata hai?

An unperturbed Arijit responds first with humour: “Yes, and with a harmonium, too!” But when Ramanand continues to look appalled, he shifts tack, listing great scientists with artistic hobbies: Einstein played the violin, Satyen Bose the esraj, while Dr Homi Bhabha painted. Ramanand is far from convinced. He displays shock that Arijit would equate Dipankar with such certified geniuses – and in the film, that's where the conversation ends.

But the exchange seems to me to encapsulate a great deal about the crisis of education in India, a malaise inextricably entwined with the social and political mess we find ourselves in, 30 years after. What do I mean? Let me draw out the connections. Dr Ramanand, the man who decides to bring Dipankar down, is a reputed gynaecologist, which might lead one to believe he is a man of science. At the very least, as a medical expert, one might expect him to have a professional investment in health. But his reaction to a vaccine that might save millions is not enthusiasm, or even a sceptical intellectual engagement. Rather than the marvellous possibility of medical advancement, he responds only to the source of that advancement. And in his mind, Dipankar ticks none of the boxes by which our system measures achievement: exams, marks, degrees – all ways to fetch a higher price in a marketplace of status.

Ramanand's scorn for Dipankar's musicality further establishes the hierarchical nature of this social-educational marketplace. Sinha doesn't spell it out, but doctors, engineers and now MBAs see themselves tied for top spot in a modern Indian educational caste system – with the arts at the bottom. A doctor interested in music is either miscegenation or proof that he isn't really deserving of his place at the top.

In this stultifying celebration of mediocrity, there is no space for genuine questioning. The film suggests two possible directions in which such an instrumental system can push a seeker of knowledge. He might find his way out of the morass early: so where Arijit set his mind to achieving a first class, Dipankar barely passed. “Kehta thha, syllabus ki kitaabon mein kya rakha hai yaar? Syllabus ke baahar ki duniya hi toh anjaani hai, aur anjaani cheezein hi toh interesting hoti hain.” But too questioning a seeker might also be pushed to the margins, treated not just with suspicion but disbelief, humiliated by those the status quo serves. So when the research Dipankar has conducted in his barebones home-made lab attracts international attention, his health ministry boss does all he can to scotch it, from actively stymying foreign inquiries to transferring Dipankar to a remote rural area.

Pankaj Kapur brings to his turn as Dipankar a vivid passion for his work, both its intellectual joys and its grand scope for social improvement. It's worth noting that the director, cinematic giant Tapan Sinha, studied physics at Patna University and later earned an MSc from Rajabazar Science College, Calcutta, while his son Anindya Sinha is a primatologist at NIAS in Bengaluru, with degrees in botany and cytogenetics. The film features a science-loving journalist called Amulya (a very young Irrfan Khan), who has a PhD but realises he isn't cut out for research and can better serve science by bringing it to public notice – a proxy for the filmmaker? Amulya's journalism, however, cuts both ways, bringing Dipankar acclaim, but also accusations of sensationalism – and already, in 1990, Sinha shows us an editor unwilling to go against the government because “Akhbaar vigyapan pe chaltein hai, vaigyaanik pe nahi”.

Although globalisation and the internet have increased access to information, doing science in India today is possibly more, not less, impeded by political pressures. Ek Doctor Ki Maut remains a memorable film about the scientific life, and it's powerfully resonant in 2020. In one memorable scene, Dipankar tells his long-suffering supportive wife Seema (Shabana Azmi) that the stars often seem to him to berate humans, wasting our time fighting each other on our little planet. “Insaan hone ka itna ghuroor, itna ghamand. Insaan ka dimaag, insaan ki buddhi kitna kucch jaanti hai hamaare baare mein?” In these last 30 years, humans have only to have grown in our hubris, our attempts to harness nature creating forms of resistance we can barely understand.

As we grapple with a new virus, can we start to imagine a science whose questions serve the universe, rather than  instrumental answers that supppsedly serve the human race? Our current goals may just cut the planet short.

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