Page 46 - Seniors Today -April20

Once Upon A Time| Films

The China

syndrome

At a time when China, epidemics and the selflessness of doctors is under
constant discussion due to the coronavirus, Deepa Gahlot takes a look at a

film that combined all these elements in a different way at a different time...

Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946) Dr Kotnis’s father gifts him a ring with a map
The story of Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis is tragic of undivided India engraved on it, and tells
yet uplifting, and it came out in fiction and film him to make his country proud. (This was
form quite soon after his death in 1942—fitting in the pre-Independence era, patriotism was
tribute to the man who went beyond the call of legitimately major!)
duty. The Indian medical team must have had a
Khwaja Ahmed Abbas wrote a novel, And tough time in an alien land during a war, but a
One Did Not Come Back, based on which V.
Shantaram made a biopic, Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar
Kahani, starring himself as the eponymous
hero. (He happened to bear a striking
resemblance to the real doctor.)
The film opens with a young Dwarka coming
back to his hometown of Sholapur, where his
father (Keshavrao Date), mother (Pratima
Devi) and siblings eagerly await his return.
While was away getting his medical degree,
his father prepared a fully equipped clinic for
him, but Dwarka had other plans. Inspired by
the speech of a great leader (either Netaji Bose
or Jawaharlal Nehru -- not named), he decided
to go to China with a medical mission, to help
the Chinese during their war with Japan, that
started in 1937. Chinese General Jhu De had
requested India for medical help and a five-
doctor team embarked on the long sea voyage
to China. The real Dr Kotnis

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