Hope Floats

Mumbai Diaries, Season 2 | Cast: Konkona Sensharma and Mohit Raina | Creator: Nikkhil Advani | Hindi | Prime Video

“Our circumstances are our identity. And our identity is our struggle. We don’t give up. We fight back. And we emerge, sometimes complete, sometimes broken.” When the Chief Medical Officer of the Bombay General Hospital, played brilliantly by Prakash Belawadi speaks, everyone listens. This hospital offers a familiar setting. We went inside its crumbling edifice with its heroic doctors and hardworking nurses when it was hit by terrorists during 26/11 in the first season of Mumbai Diaries in 2021. Now it’s the site of another tragedy, the floods of July 26, 2005, which claimed over 1,000 lives. Many of those who helped save lives are still standing in the show’s second season, but only just. Dr Kaushik Oberoi (Mohit Raina in another star-making turn) has been suspended for apparently not saving a senior police officer’s life. Chitra Das (Konkona Sensharma), the hospital’s backbone, is visited by her old tormentor, played with relish by Parambrata Chattopadhyay, who keeps everyone guessing if he is a reformed abuser or a manipulative psychopath. Then there are the three residents from Season One, with their own demons, and the star of the season, Mumbai and its spirit. There are some spectacular scenes of the city drowning in water, a news anchor who starts out chasing ratings but soon realises that truth is more important that a story, and several minor characters. It is busy, noisy and wet, but Raina’s vulnerable doctor and Sensharma’s traumatised survivor add layers to the show with their lived-in performances.

Why Watch it? It is creator and director Nikkhil Advani’s best work, and that’s saying a lot for the director of Kal Ho Naa Ho and D-Day

Capital Ambition

Sultan of Delhi| Cast: Tahir Raj Bhasin, Vinay Pathak, Nishant Dahiya | Showrunner: Milan Luthria| Hindi | Disney+Hotstar

Milan Luthria is a master of the gangster genre, with Once Upon a Time in Mumbai (2010) an excellent addition to the Haji Mastan/Dawood Ibrahim myth-making. So it’s interesting to see what he does with the Delhi of the 1960s, when those from sarhad-par (across the border) were trying to make a mark in the Capi­tal. They were up against the entrenched elite of the city, who disapproved of the refugees who had landed at their door. It pits two young men, Tahir Raj Bhasin (Arjun Bhatia) and Nishant Dahiya (Rajendra Singh) against each other: one a fatherless boy who loses every­thing in his escape from Lahore, and the other a young man who hates his late father and wants everything he had, including his fevered mistress (Anupriya Goenka). Luthria’s storytelling sometimes lapses into the florid and the period styling is somewhat erratic, but he keeps enough gunfights and the sex scenes going for the interest to not wane.

Why watch it? Black marketing arms, politicking and social climbing. Delhi is all about power that is all about money. Based on Arnab Ray’s book, this is a quick and colourful primer

entertainmentKonkona SensharmaMumbai DiariesSeason 2streaming businessSultan of Delhi