Against the backdrop of the Mumbai train blasts, filmmaker Jai Tank unspools a drama of the human spirit

After every terror attack, Mumbaikars are hailed for their “resilience”. It was the same after the serial blasts in the city’s local train network in July 2006. “Once again, there was a wave of compliments about the resilient Mumbaikar. That was the wrong premise to start with. The real story is that the human spirit does not bow down to adversity,” says director Jai Tank, 35, whose debut feature film Madholal Keep Walking unfolds against the backdrop of the blasts. “It is a story of a security guard who loses his right arm and is unable to cope with the trauma,” says Tank, about the film which was screened at the 11th Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival at Siri Fort.

The film has Kolkata-based theatre actor Suprat Dutta playing Madholal, who works in the commercial district of Mumbai who and lives with his family in a chawl. Delhi-based theatre actress Swara Bhaskar, 25, executes the role of Madholal’s daughter in the film. “It was difficult to speak Hindi in the Mumbaikar style, so I asked my maid to read my dialogues out to me,” says Bhaskar, for whom this is the second acting project.

But the train blasts are merely the backdrop, clarifies Tank. “The focus is on the resilience of the human spirit and the manner in which Madholal comes to term with his fate,” he adds. The film was screened at the Atlanta Film festival in April and Tank will soon take it to the Sao Paolo Film festival.

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