Aashayein

A tale about fighting cancer? Nearly mistook it for a homage to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

You can’t hit the road if you start off with a cul-de-sac. The leading man has cancer and finds a nice place to die. It’s a home with palliative care for the terminally ill and all guests are waiting for an early departure to the hereafter. Our man looks on as his house mates take off, one by one, and waits for his turn to board the plane. That’s the movie.  

Palliative care could have included a little ‘dead man walking’ humour, but no such luck. Rahul (John Abraham), a handsome and well built chap, periodically clutches his chest, rubs his eyes and crawls on the floor. You hope and pray he finds his contact lenses. But no, he is demonstrating trauma to the chest and rolls around athletically a few times to indicate the distressing symptoms of lung cancer.

The other inmates of this transit lounge all look like they have recently had close encounters of the third kind. For instance, there is a little boy called Govinda (Ashwin Chitale) with an extraterrestrial expression who  produces an endless supply of mangoes from under his pillow and can instantly visualise the secret fantasy Rahul has always had of dressing up as Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark.  

Then there is a testy fellow called Parthasarthi (Girish Karnad) who has had his larynx removed after throat cancer. He speaks with the aid of a battery-operated electrolarynx in order to sound exactly like Darth Vader from The Empire Strikes Back. Last, but not least, there is the most voluble member of the club, a chatter-box called Padma (Anaitha Nair), an unmistakable allusion to R2-D2 from Star Wars. She moves rapidly on wheels, keels over humorously, and then produces inconsequential data in an exuberant stream of verbosity. 

Without a doubt, Aashayein is director Nagesh Kukunoor’s homage to  Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

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Ajit Duara