Mumbai Diaries Season 2 Is Better Scripted Than Season 1

Mumbai  Diaries Season 2(Prime Video)

Starring Konkona Sen Sharma, Mohit Raina, Tina Desai, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Satyajeet Dubey, Natasha Bharadwaj, Mrunmayee Deshpande and Prakash Belawadi ,Parambrata Chattopadhyay ,Riddhi Dogra

Directed  by Nikhil Advani

Rating: ****

Overlooking the  rather  strange lacuna  in  the timeline whereby the second season moves from the terror attack of 26/11/2008   to  the monsoonal deluge  of 26/7/2005, Mumbai Diaries part 2 is  a more  intricately sketched  portrayal of a city  under siege than part 1 which suffered  from under-developed  characters and over-informed plot developments.

 By now  we know who’s who at  the Bombay General Hospital . They need no introduction, and their function within  the  disembodied domain of injury and trauma is  clearly  aligned to the crisis on hand. There is more of Konkona Sen  Sharma’s  Chitra Das this time than Mohit Raina’s  Dr Kaushik  Oberoi , the head of trauma who seems pretty traumatized  himself.

There are tons of  trauma to be negotiated  by Chitra who suddenly finds herself face-to-face with her  abusive husband from the past(Parambrata  Chattopadhyay) whose strange  British-Bengali accent is worthy of a PhD thesis. The  cat-and-mouse game between  the couple occupies considerable  time in  the  screenplay which is otherwise  pacy and  effective.

What doesn’t work is  the  repeated evocation of  some of  the characters’  problems as patients which  frankly,  tries  our patience. One electrocuted  boy who is  rolled in  remains a matter  of debate over his drug usage  for way too long .What we  needed was to meet more of the of the  patients and their  accompanying relatives,  rather than negotiating an extra-expanded  ambit of  problems faced by the doctors.

 That said, Mumbai Diaries 2 is never short  of  involving drama.The actors help keep the story of  the deluge aloft. Konkona and Raina fall into the ever-reliable category.But some  of the other lesser-known actors  like Natasha Bhardwaj and Mrunmayee Desshpande pull us  into their intern’s  internal  trauma with a sense of commitment  .

But my favourite  character  and actor is Sister Cherian  played by  Balaji Gauri who echoes  Lalita Pawar’s  hardshelled soft-interior nurses’s  act from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand. Satyajeet  Dubey’s intern’s  role  suffers from an  incurable  silliness. While the hospital is afire  with life-and-death issues,   Dubey runs around with two tickets  of Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal trying to get Chitra’s attention.

Didn’t Love Aaj Kal come four years  after the  Mumbai monsoonal deluge?