F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b

<It’s better that you go see it first and then come back and read it.>

Hospitals are usually extremely humbling places. I have been to some, quite a few times and every single time I have felt the fragility of life from up close. Hotels, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. Specially 5 star ones. October expertly navigates these two spaces. One filled with arrogance, opulence, mirth and joy and the other full of weirdly calming sounds of ventilators, ECGs and the constant humming of the ceiling tube-lights.

During the 1st year of our Engineering college annual fest, two of the hostel-mates went drunk-biking and drove into a divider. The luckier one survived with a fractured arm, while the other, who was riding pillion, a good looking 6 feet+ Delhi boy ended up with a cracked skull in a hospital. All of us went to see him. He lay on the bed unconscious, his head wrapped in white, blood splotched cotton bandages and his face bruised tender on one side. He was critical. He had to drop out because he wasn’t the same guy after surgery. He was hospitalized for a long time, lost most of his memory and went home to recover. We all forgot about it and went about our lives as usual. I remember it vividly because it was my first visit to the ICU and it was a surreal experience for an 18 year old me.

I saw the guy 2 years after that. He came back to re-enroll in 1st year. His father was holding his hand while walking him around the administrative buildings. He was limping with the help of a cane. His speech was slurred. Some of the guys went to say Hi, but he didn’t recognize them.

I remember seeing him like that and feeling strangely emotional. My eyes welled up a little. I had played cricket/volleyball with the guy. He was a proper hunk and to see him as a hollow shell of his former self made me sad.

I hadn’t thought of him since that day, until yesterday. October made me think of him. I was one of the side characters in his life like one of the many friends of Shiuli who visited her a few times in the hospital and then slowly moved on.

One of her friends, Dan, didn’t. He stuck around. Why? October doesn’t have a straightforward answer for you. As a film, it’s more interested in observing the glacial pace of life and healing and human bonds that form by accident but last a lifetime.

You hang on to something, only God knows for what reason. You find a purpose in it? Sukoon? It makes you feel good about yourself? Or you’re just delusional and making up shit that isn’t there. Maybe you are overcompensating for the lack of anything else meaningful in your life? ‘Dhun’, ‘Lagan’, ‘Deewanagi’, ‘Obsession’, call it whatever. You grab on to it tightly and hold it close to your chest, and you don’t pay attention to anything that tells you to do otherwise.

“Job hai, family hai. Sab kuch chhod chaad ke thodi baith sakte hai. Practical hona padta hai yaar.”

But Dan’s practical is different. His practical tells him to let go of sanity and embrace this cause because her last sentence was a question about him. “Ae, Where is Dan?”, said absolutely casually, with no hidden meaning or feelings. A totally casual inquiry that just happened to be the last thing she said before she met a life altering tragedy. But he somehow makes it his crucible to carry.

That kind of inexplicable madness is of course what drives artists, explorers, scientists, and people who really really give a fuck about what they do. But sometimes ordinary people like Danish Waliya fall prey to it. There is nothing to be achieved here, in materialistic terms. It’s not even spiritual per se. It just is. It took the controls from him when he wasn’t looking and now he can’t go back. He loses appetite, sleep, friends, routine and even a career. For a person he barely knew. But this cause has become his life’s mission. It’s a beautiful mess.

He isn’t her boyfriend. Not even one of the close friends. They were Hotel Management trainees at Radisson, Dwarka and sometimes worked the same room or hung out at the roof where Dan brought everyone stolen booze coz he’s an irritable class clown but also a sweetheart. He’s annoying & temperamental but also capable of befuddling kindness. He don’t suffer fools or snobs. So you know, life’s difficult for him.

Thankfully, October surrounds him with nice people whose own kindness allows them to see through his annoyance. Friends are so important.

“She can’t survive. It’s highly unlikely. We should pull the plug. It’s too costly to keep her alive.”

He hears everything and he doesn’t get angry. There is no melodrama, emotional outburst, or an impassioned speech against euthanasia. The dexterity with which this film tiptoes around cliches is mesmerizing.

“She is just 21. I think she would have wanted to live.”

This is enough. Enough for her mother to clutch on and keep fighting for her barely conscious girl. He becomes a part of their life so effortlessly. The doctors, nurses, staff, Shiuli’s family, they all accept this stranger, with obvious initial reluctance. He finds a sort of relevance that we all crave for, in a place where hope springs eternal.

A friend of mine once told me that “Helping someone is inherently a very selfish act.” and I have found myself agreeing with it most of the times. The sleight of October is that it is skillfully oblivious of this selfishness, and so is Dan which is what makes him such an endearing character. Someone you would want to hug every time you see him. Varun Dhawan brings his A game here, not as a star, but as an actor.

Dan’s mother, in a beautiful scene between her and Shiuli’s mother Vidya, talks about the fear of losing ones kids once they grow up, hinting at Dan who hasn’t visited her even once in 10 months.

“Dan has been a pillar.”, Vidya (a perfectly cast Gitanjali Rao, an award winning animator and storyteller herself) informs her.

Dan was busy being the son of a single mother whose daughter may or may not have cared about him.

Vidya abruptly leaves the room and the camera linger a second too long on Dan’s mother and Shiuli as the scene changes.

This restrain in the writing and thoughtfulness in frames is magical and so unconventional for a Bollywood film (only ‘Court’ comes to mind), all thanks to the sensibilities of its writer Juhi Chaturvedi, who has matured into such a confident screenwriter over this trilogy of sorts of ‘Delhi Films’ (Vicky Donor, Piku). It also reminded me of this brilliant animated short Death of a Father, perhaps because a major chunk of it is set inside a hospital and it also refuses its audience a catharsis.

Delhi winter, with all its fog and smog and pollution, makes for a beautiful backdrop to this film that finds warmth in abundance in everyday moments. Be it a conversation between Dan and the Nurse (“Gift leke aana aap”), or between Dan and her friend who gives him 2500 rs for petrol (“Kitne chahiye? ” “Bas tank full ho jaaye.”) or when Shiuli’s siblings make fun of him or when he is the only one who remembers to get a wood-plank installed at the doorsteps because Shiuli will be on wheelchair when she comes back home (“Iske neeche baad me na cement lagwa denge“). It’s choke-full of such tender moments and just when you think that you can hold the water in your eyes, the exceptionally contained background score kicks in. This just might be Shantanu Moitra’s life’s best work, at par with this beautiful Leftovers theme that never fails to move me.

There is so much filth around us for the past week that I had kinda started giving up on humanity. Cynicism and bitterness are a constant when you are scrolling through your twitter/FB feed and seeing people spew hatred and garbage towards each other. In such a time, October was like a soul cleanse I so badly needed. You do too. Go for it, you will come out a better person, I promise you.

– Avinash Verma

(Avinash‘ full time job is to watch films and in his free time he pretends to be a Digital Marketeer. He occasionally writes on Medium as well.)