India Lockdown: A touching ode to the lockdown days

Director : Madhur Bhandarkar
Produced by : Jayantilal Gada, Bhandarkar Entertainment
Writer : Amit Joshi
Star Cast : Shweta Basu Prasad, Prateik Babbar, Sai Tamhankar, Aahana Kumra, Saanand Verma, Madhvendra Jha, Prakash Belawadi, Zarin Shihab, Gopal Singh, Salim Siddiqui, Tahura Mansuri, Kavitta Amarjeett, Sahil Sethi
Cinematographer : Keiko Nakahar
Production House: PJ Motion Pictures

Tanisha Saxena

India Lockdown is a film that chronicles five parallel stories of disparate characters set in Mumbai — A Father who is planning to fly off to Hyderabad to meet his pregnant daughter; a young couple who desperately want to shrug off their virginity tag; a commercial pilot who is always soaring up in the unbound sky; a migrant couple who are living a hand to mouth life; sex workers at kamathipura.All these characters’ lives are paused as soon as pandemic induced lockdown is announced by the government of India.

The film is inspired by true events and the subject is so familiar to each one of us that initial reluctance to move ahead is obvious.After all, we have lived through the gloomy days of lockdown together. India Lockdown meticulously highlights those emotions through the characters without going into absolute darkness which could have made us emotionally disturbed.

The film begins with a beautiful note from Nelson Mandela that ‘The greatest glory in living, lies not in never falling, but in rising everytime we fall…’ and rightly so the film is about living, falling and rising again.The first five to eight minutes of the film gives us a panoramic view of the kind of life we have had before the lockdown through mundane yet outstanding visuals.The nuances are really appreciative such as the symbolism of caged birds which furthered the implications of India lockdown.

The characters are soon established only to get distributed by the sudden announcement of lockdown for 21-days. A workaholic commercial pilot Moon Alves (Played by Aahana Kumra) is never used to staying on the ground as her life is filled with excitement to fly off to different destinations. As soon as the lockdown is announced she feels helpless and stuck at her plush apartment all alone. M Nageshwar Rao (played by Prakash Belawadi) is a retired old man probably in his late sixties who yearns to meet his daughter who’s expecting after many years of her marriage. Phoolmati (played by Sai Tamhankar) wife of migrant worker Madhav (played by Prateik Babbar) works as a maid in Rao’s apartment but unfortunately she loses her job as maids are barred from entering the high rise housings. Madhav and Phoolmati remind us of the mass exodus of the migrant workers in the country.

Furthermore, we see a mushy couple Palak (played by Zarin Shihab) and Satvik Bhatia navigating the lockdown on zoom calls as their plans to lose their virginity are lost in the darkness of lockdown. On the other end of the spectrum is the life of sex workers in brothels of Kamathipura. Mehrunnisa (played by Shweta Basu Prasad) is a sex worker who can’t help but bear the brunt of losing her clients but tries to find alternative ways to sustain.

The writers have successfully surfaced the hypocrisy of rich people in society who have misused their powers in such gruesome times. In essence, India Lockdown is a genuine attempt to portray human emotions and conflicts.The story is about survival and going through all the odds of the lockdown together. The USP of the film is the compelling cast and the different backdrops that these characters are set in all the while meeting at one juncture of their lives.These characters cross paths in the film and beautifully blossom. Paying heed to the emotional conflict, the writer has done a marvelous job of giving each of the five separate stories a solid anchor.

While everyone does a fine job in delivering impactful performances, the one who steals the show is the stellar performance by Shweta Basu Prasad as a sex worker. She gets into the skin of the character so effortlessly that we don’t realise we are watching a fictional piece. Prateek Babbar played the role of a migrant worker in the film could have shined brighter, nevertheless, his sincere efforts are visible in the film.

Adding another layer of emotion is the song Ghor bhasad sung by Sukhwinder Singh whose spine chilling lyrics takes us back to the paused moments of lockdown.In a nutshell, India lockdown is surely not unnerving, it is in fact a sunshine that tries to cast a positive spell in the society about human emotions and appreciates the togetherness of people.