On the afternoon of August 17, 2020, Nishikant Kamat’s life resembled a Nishikant Kamat film. A director of Hindi and Marathi movies, Kamat was in the hospital battling chronic liver disease and secondary infections. But by the afternoon, many national media outlets – both Hindi and English – had announced him dead. The torrent of misinformation was so severe that it prompted Riteish Deshmukh, who starred in Kamat’s 2014 Marathi blockbuster, Lai Bhaari, to tweet that the director was on “ventilator support”, “alive and fighting”. An hour later, he wrote, “Requesting all the media houses who reported on #NishikantKamat to put out a clarification please.”
Will not get over this …. Rest In Peace #NishikantKamat pic.twitter.com/7uZcaJIOFO
— John Abraham (@TheJohnAbraham) August 17, 2020
Media’s love for sensation and lack of ethics – and a human being at the centre of that circus: it was not difficult to remember Kamat’s second film, Mumbai Meri Jaan (2008). A broadcast journalist, Rupali (Soha Ali Khan), finds out that her fiancé is missing; a bomb went off in a Mumbai local on the same day. Her colleague, covering the accident, interviews her on camera, asking, “Aapko kaisa mehsoos ho raha hai (How are you feeling)?” Later, she faces the camera again, doing a show on the channel’s relief fund. Her husband is dead by now, and she struggles to finish a proper sentence: one take, then another, and a dozen more – nothing comes out, except her tears. Few Hindi films have captured the dehumanising gaze of journalism in the way Mumbai Meri Jaan did. And the man behind that film – Kamat, who turned 50 two months ago – is no more.
Dramas centred on the common man
Kamat made his directorial debut 15 years ago with the Marathi film Dombivali Fast (2005), a drama centred on a common man, someone so fed up of pervasive corruption and dishonesty that he is compelled to restore the balance on his own. In a cinema culture dominated by stars helming escapist films, Kamat’s debut was about a bank employee in a suffocating train. Dombivali Fast was an impressive debut, winning the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Marathi and getting a remake in Tamil – directed by Kamat.
Regular people intrigued the filmmaker – invisible people living invisible lives, on the verge of being swallowed by the big city, rendered blunt by daily exasperations and yet, sharp enough to push back, to fight that fight which consumed them. He carried that preoccupation to his next and finest film, Mumbai Meri Jaan, which broadened the definition of ordinary. Unlike Dombivali Fast, his sophomoric effort tackled several parallel stories, framing the frustration and fears of Mumbaikars forced to confront a discomfiting truth: that their lives are profoundly precarious, and everything needs to be earned in the Maximum City – grief, closure, redemption.
Ooster for Mumbai Meri Jaan. Photo credit: UTV
I remember this Kamat quite fondly: a man coming of age in an industry that had begun to bend the rules. Mumbai Meri Jaan released in August 2008, when ‘New Bollywood’ was the new buzz word. A time when upcoming filmmakers were willing to risk and subvert and experiment. Around the time Kamat’s movie released, a spate of Hindi films was challenging the status quo: Manorma Six Feet Under (2007), Johnny Gaddar (2007), Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008), Dasvidaniya (2008), Dev D. (2009), Sankat City (2009) and several more.
Even the films produced by the big banners had a whiff of rebellion: Chak De! India (2007), Rocket Singh (2009), Wake Up Sid (2009). In this remarkable churning of filmmaking consciousness, Kamat’s contribution was a significant chapter. In fact, just the cast of Mumbai Meri Jaan – including such actors as Irrfan Khan, Kay Kay Menon, Vijay Maurya – represented the ascent of filmmaking ambition. It was a good time to be a director; it was a great time to be a fan.
A turn to big action films
Kamat then turned to big, action films, spawning a markedly different filmography. Films such as Force (2011), Lai Bhaari and Rocky Handsome (2016) followed, sharing crucial commonalities – a badass hero, a menacing villain, plentiful slick action – that prioritised genre pleasures over moral ambiguities. Yet Kamat’s detour was never permanent; he was always looking for a segue, a way to broaden to his directorial ambit.
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So, between a Marathi and a Bollywood actioner – Lai Bhaari and Rocky Handsome – came Drishyam (2015), a remake of the 2013 Malayalam thriller. Sombre, layered, deceptive, Drishyam was a fascinating tribute to the powers of ordinariness – a motif marking his first two films as well. (Drishyam’s lead, played by Ajay Devgn, is a school dropout running a local cable TV business, considered too dumb for sophisticated thought.) Kamat’s next and last movie, Madaari, starring Irrfan Khan, furthered that engagement. Even his last appearance on screen, where he played a villain, came in a film, Bhavesh Joshi (2018), that contemplated the drive of an ordinary citizen.
Kamat’s films celebrated the everyman; they gave him freedom, power, gumption. The country was held back by corrupt and immoral forces, but there was always someone squashing social inequities. Or, at times, the villain was one’s own self – a mix of prejudice and cynicism and yet, someone not above salvation. Kamat died young; he was 50, a tale-in-transition, deprived of his own third act. But his films, at their finest, dignified the (big and small) yearnings of a young, hopeful heart: an honest nation-state, courageous citizens, a secular populace – and the desire to get a corner seat in a Mumbai local.