Nihlani back with Deham

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">You simply can’t ignore Govind Nihalani. Ever since he burst into Indian cinema with <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Ardh Satya</span>, Nihalani has been the constant voice-of-conscience filmmaker which India sorely needs. Of course, sometimes his idiom has failed to convey his message, nevertheless, the message has always remained: topical, remedial and insightful.Hence the importance of <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Deham</span>...<br />Based on Manjula Padmanabhan’s award-winning play <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Harvest, Deham</span> is a disturbing look at India 2022. It’s the not-so-distant future when a destitute nation will be openly preyed upon by the richer superpowers who have amassed everything. Well almost, for despite the material prosperity that marks the collective life, there are still some banks which have to be built up. These are the body parts banks desperately needed by a race that has conquered everything except death and disease. Now, even this victory seems to be round the corner for Inter Planta Services, a multinational that buys up body parts, seems to be flooded with an army of sellers: Donors who are more than willing to sell their body, bit by bit, for a fistful of dollars.<br />Jaya and Om, (Kitu and Joy) a fringe couple in an oversized metropolis — lead a cheerless, impoverished life in a seedy chawl. Joblessness, desperation, cynicism are the defining national sentiment and the educated unemployed look for succour, any which way. Even if it means bartering away your state-of-being, piecemeal. With a family to care for and an empty kitty staring at him, the young man enters into a contract with a mutlinational whereby he trades his body parts for material well-being.<br />The family portrait is an archetypal picture of dissolution and decay. While Om’s younger brother has abandoned the family homestead and earns his upkeep as a bi-sexual sex worker, Om’s mother has been frayed by years of want and penniless living. So much so, she sees nothing amiss with her son’s trade-off, as long as she gets her long-desired television set, her fridge, her microwave and all the other things that money can buy. Om, on his part, is too smitten by the beautiful blonde — his buyer from across the seven seas — that keeps staring down at him from the television screen and drives him queasy with her tantalisingly delivered sermons.<br />There seems to be only one sane voice in this sorry scene. Jaya, the sensitive young wife seems to have somehow managed to retain her not-for-sale soul despite the overarching gloom. Even as everything falls apart and the nation/family prepares for a new state of serfdom, Jaya’s whisper of dissent soon magnifies into a charter of freedom. The superpowers are brought to their knees by a small hero who refuses to trade-off human dignity for anything.<br />A strong indictment of the path of human progress, <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Deham</span> is a futuristic fable which seems to be already taking shape. Needless to say, the film has an appeal only for a niche audience and cannot be measured on the parameters of regular box office fare. Nihalani successfully conjures up the closed, claustrophobic interiors of a boxed-in nation that has been deprived of all its options. Where Nihalani fails is in the special effects. The futuristic bits have a fancy dress artificiality to them unlike the human drama which is hard-hitting and quite unnerving.</div> </div>