Tumko Meri Kasam
Starring Anupam Kher, Adah Sharma, Esha Deol, Ishwak Singh, Durgesh Kumar
Directed by Vikram Bhatt
There is a redemptive quality to this bio-pic. A doctor who incepted many dreams of fertility for wailing wombs is given a film all to his own. And that’s reason enough for the lately-fallen Vikram Bhatt to pull up his socks and switch from horror to healing.
Not that Tumko Meri Kasam is a grand masterpiece, far from it. Some portions in the first half are so clunky that I feared for the well-being of the end product. However, Bhatt seems to embrace his mellow route responsibly. Vikram Bhatt not only takes up a subject that is true life and potentially inspiring, but he also suffuses the narrative with ample evidence of his own healing process.
The narrative goes back and forth in time with seamless swiftness. Although the playing time is almost three hours, the telling of Dr Ajay Murdia’s story, the narration stays on its feet by and large.
The growth and prevalence of Murdia’s procreative empire is celebrated largely through his edifying relationship with his wife Indira (Adah Sharma, spirited). Adah’s ebullience is offset fluidly by Ishwak Singh’s diffident serenity in the flashbacks. The pair is adequately complementary. If a tad too pat.
Anupam Kher swings into the older version of Murdia’s role with his habitual conviction. Ishwak and Anupam, playing the past and present, bring a winsome fertility to the saga of the fertility doctor.
But my favourite performer and performance in this ode to the mating season, is by Durgesh Kumar who we’ve seen in the overrated series Panchayat. Here, Vikram Bhatt gives Durgesh the most moving and unpredictable sequence as a hostile witness in the courtroom where his son (played by Meherzan Mazda, an actor who sure loves to ACT) turns against the man who gave him a life.
When Durgesh calls his own son a “snake”, I felt the entire plot come together in a warm embrace of cohesive conscientiousness. Interestingly, the “snake” is also compared with Aurangzeb in the film. There is no escaping the dynastic dynamics, I guess.
This is by far the best-written moment in an otherwise unevenly but interestingly scripted bio-pic, which could do with some trimming before the midpoint. It nevertheless hits home at the right places.
While some of the supporting roles seem to be played by relatives of the producers, Esha Deol stands tall as the fertility doctor’s lawyer. There should have been more of her. Instead, she is made to sit in the courtroom for the climax while Dr. Murdia fights his own case.
