Mumbai Diaries 2 Review: A Gritty Medical Drama With Outstanding Performances

Season 1 of Mumbai Diaries 2 was a difficult act to follow. Season 2 does a good job of it, delivering an eminently compelling and diverse drama

Mumbai Diaries Season 2, a gritty medical drama supported by strong performances and a screenplay that packs a powerful punch, blends the personal with the professional and the private with the public to piece together stories of surgeons and patients grappling with complexities that unfold in a government hospital over the course of a single day of unprecedented monsoon chaos.

Nikkhil Advani, the creator and director of the show, creates a season that is on par with its predecessor by returning to the Bombay General Hospital for another in-depth look at the operations of a hospital that is overflowing with patients. Well, nearly.

The eight-episode new season, with a script by Yash Chhetija and Persis Sodawaterwalla and dialogue by Sanyuktha Chawla Shaikh, highlights the hospital’s medical staff, including its surgeons, nurses, and ward boys, for their unwavering spirit. They resemble the crowded, busy metropolis quite closely. They persist despite the difficulties they face.

The second season of Mumbai Diaries uses the July 26, 2005 Mumbai floods as a flashpoint and changes the timeline to set the torrential rain and its effects six months and a little after the 2008 terror attacks that shook the city and were powerfully dramatised in the first season of the show in 2021.

The city receives more rain than ever before, completely disrupting daily life on the streets, six months after Dr. Kaushik Oberoi (Mohit Raina), the head and workhorse of the trauma surgery department of Bombay General Hospital, is cleared of the charge of negligence during the Mumbai terror attacks on November 26, 2008.

Kaushik’s career is still dogged by uncertainty as the flood gets worse and the streets start to resemble a battleground. The widow of murdered Joint Commissioner of Police Anant Kelkar (Sonali Kulkarni), Mansi Hirani (Shreya Dhanwanthary), conducts a relentless public trial against the troubled surgeon. 

The chief medical officer Dr. Madhusudan Subramaniam (Prakash Belawadi) and the special services officer Chitra Das (Konkona Sen Sharma), two of Dr. Oberoi’s coworkers at the overburdened hospital, stand by him despite the fact that he is not technically permitted to perform surgeries until the court decides his future as a doctor.

Unprecedented levels of chaos are unleashed by the downpour. The judgement in the Dr. Oberoi case is postponed by a few days since the judge was unable to arrive at the court. Due to traffic, a surgeon who is urgently needed at the hospital is unable to arrive at the OT. However, patients continue to pour into the hospital’s 1200 beds. It only gets worse when the flooding from the rain gets worse.

In order to depict a sense of urgency and fear as the surgeons race against time to save lives, the show is peppered with long shots and director of photography Malay Prakash’s camera frequently snakes around the corridors and the interiors of the hospital.  The hospital addresses “unlimited issues with constrained resources

What Mumbai Diaries Season 2 accomplishes with a steady hand is disclose the odds that the surgeons and other staff members have to confront day in and day out, all in a day’s job. It nearly gives a blow-by-blow depiction of a 24-hour cycle in the life of the hospital.

And July 26 is not a typical day in any way. A series of crises occur during this long, stressful, and demanding day, taxing the hospital staff emotionally. The programme takes into account the structural faults that make things worse for first responders, including greed, corruption, the delicate power relationships that keep everyone on edge, and the ongoing shortage of vital medications.

Not only the hospital struggles with these inherent distortions. Mansi faces unique difficulties at her job as a news reporter for a television network. A subplot that takes place at a juvenile detention facility turns out to be a haven for anomalies. In addition to fighting for his life, a young guy who is brought in on a wheelchair and has second-degree burns must also contend with cruel police overreach and intense family pressure.

A railway station overbridge collapse, which is based on an incident that actually happened a decade later, occurs early in the play and exposes both corporate wrongdoing and an attempt at media cover-up. 

Season 2 of Mumbai Diaries tackles a number of issues, including class, caste, politics, domestic abuse, and gender identity. They also make mention of rubbish dumped illegally, indiscriminate building, and a congested river. Even when the hospital’s ground floor and basement are overrun and all but inaccessible, patients face life-or-death circumstances, doctors battle tiredness, and support workers continue to make progress.

Mumbai Diaries uses a strategy that worked really well in Season 1, namely switching between the hospital and the streets, where chaos reigns supreme. The hospital staff’s personal difficulties increase as the city and its residents struggle.

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Tina Desai’s character, Ananya, the pregnant wife of Dr. Oberoi, gets lost while travelling to Pune. Dr. Saurav Chandra (Parambrata Chattopadhyay), the controlling spouse Chitra fled from two years earlier, unexpectedly reappears as a member of a UK medical mission, catching Chitra off guard.

Ahaan Mirza (Satyajeet Dubey), a young resident surgeon, is experiencing mental struggle as a result of his growing affections for Chitra. Sujata Ajawale (Mrunmayee Deshpande) and Diya Parekh (Natasha Bharadwaj), two of the other younger doctors who are still getting their bearings, are thrust into a circumstance that will test their resiliency.

The show takes a dark turn in the finale when one of the main characters exhibits his real colours. In the last scenes, as sorrow, sadness, and self-assertion suddenly come to the fore, the usually impartial story gives a little to melodrama. However, it doesn’t significantly disrupt the show’s rhythm.

How necessary is the incessant harping on “the undying spirit of Mumbai”? This is a point that may not directly relate to the overall impact of Mumbai Diaries Season 2, and it has surely been raised countless times before. It just seems to solidify the story of hope that was created to lull the populace and those in charge of running the city into a state of complacency.

Instead of believing that nothing can ever frighten the citizens of the city as they go about their daily lives, it is definitely time for Mumbaikars and shows like this one to demand a better deal from the authorities. Seriously, whose city or village in this nation ever comes to a complete standstill when disaster strikes? None ever have, never do, and never will. Our lot as Indians is to live with reversals, whether they are man-made or natural.

Overall, Season 1 was a difficult act to follow. Season 2 does a respectable job of handling the situation and provides an incredibly compelling and broad-based drama that gives the spectator something to think about.

Cast:

Mohit Raina, Natasha Bharadwaj, Satyajeet Dubey, Konkona Sen Sharma, and Shreya Dhanwanthary

Director:

Advani, Nikkhil