Showing posts with label corona virus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corona virus. Show all posts

Monday 6 April 2020

Bollywood Films on Epidemics



Amid fears stoked by the coronavirus, I recall "Contagion" -- a 2011 movie about a pandemic with similarities to recent events. This compelled me to look back into the Bollywood films on this subject. Not many films were made in this subject but a few movies had epidemic references.
To consider just a handful, let us first take V. Shantaram’s Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946) about an Indian doctor who went to China to help the Communists against the Japanese army, to help the wounded when there was a scarcity of doctors. While in China Dr. Kotnis met and courted a Chinese girl, Ching Lan. In the film, Dr. Kotnis fights plague and, when he is unable to find a cure, he injects himself with the contents of a patient’s pustules in an effort to find antibodies, and eventually dies of plague after doing yeoman service to the Chinese.


The 1966 film Phool Aur Pathar is one such film where the epidemic was the central theme. In this film, it was shown how a criminal goes to a village to burgle a house when plague empties a town of its inhabitants, He finds nothing except Shanti, a widowed daughter-in-law who has been left to die by her cruel relatives.


In 2011 a film Azaan had a story of a deadly virus. The film tells the story of a RAW agent who is sent on a secret mission. He has to find a cure for a deadly virus. 


In 2013 Krrish 3 had a story in which the hero's father Rohit discovers that a virus, which is fast spreading through Mumbai   He knew about this virus which came from Namibia. He, thus, makes an antidote by using the blood from Krishna's bloodstream which he spreads with the help of explosions.