There is no plot, no action, no entertainment, not even a second-long
emotional melodrama given the premise of a tragic event changing the lives of
those around. There is no hero and no heroine. There is no Varun Dhawan (for
the fans). There is no villain.
There is a lost 21-year-old boy: Dan (Dhawan). He is a Hotel
Management trainee who doesn’t want to clean bed sheets. His father is based in
Jammu and he has come to Intern at a 5-star hotel. He wants his own Start-Up
some day and constantly whines about being given useless work of vacuum
cleaning the hotel rooms.
There is a 20-year-old, bright and sincere girl called Shiuli
(Banita Sandhu). Shiuli does her job really well and is always given the more
popular responsibilities of serving the hotel customers at reception desks. She
doesn’t take Dan’s digs at her personally. “Itni
intelligent hai to scientist kyon nahin bani…hotel management kyon kar rai hai…”
,he objects rudely to the seniors who praise her. Shiuli simply ignores him,
even when he mocks her fondness for collecting her favourite seasonal October
flowers: Parijat ( Coral Jasmine).
The flowers are the only predictable symbolic objects here. The
tree is called the ‘tree of sorrow”. When first seen through Avik Mukhopadhyay’s
lens, they look like a hazy and beautiful early morning dream. The screen looks
magical with trees bearing the fresh and pure white flowers. We see them
through Shiuli’s wondrous eyes and we are filled with the sense of wonder
ourselves. Later, the flowers make occasional, fleeting appearances as a
reminder of what October is all about: fleeting seasons of change and the
beauty of each and the inevitable sense of waiting and sorrow.
Waiting is all one can do, when the course of life changes
its turns, just like the course of nature. So Dan waits. Along with Shiuli’s
mother, sister, a teenage brother, for Shuili to move a muscle, to simple twitch
her jaw or shift her eyeballs: left to say ‘yes’ to the doctor’s question,
right to say ‘no’. Her still form, lying in a hospital bed is an excruciating
sight to behold. It is merely addressed by the most inane conversation that
only two scared and ignorant youngsters can have.
“There were 19 tubes on her body.’
“Tune gine?”
……..tu kabhi ICU gaya
hai?
Main do baar gaya hoon
Kab?
Kal ur aaj.”
…yaar meri hawa nikal
gayi thi…”
Light, shallow, realistic moments like these, ease the pain
of waiting and watching. But the film does not shy away from the helplessness
of it all. There is no attempt at heroic drama of Dan turning into the star
Varun Dhawan who will suddenly claim to fall in love and magically find the
resources to fly Shuili out somewhere in Karan Johar’s world of “Kal Ho Na Ho”
or the tragic interplay of lost love. Instead we see Dan simply searching for
his visiting card under Shuili’s hospital bed just as a visitor friend would,
inquisitively looking at the bottle of urine under the bed and discussing it
with the nurse and even finding hope in the body continuing to do its function
while the brain may take its time to respond.
And just like that, without a major, dramatic turning point,
the mood of the film changes from the mundane of hotel laundry and vaccum jobs
to a shocking life event to endless and futile human queries at a hospital to
the only one wonder of life : HOPE.
Hope in the form of a urine pouch filling up more as days go
by; hope in the form of Jasmine flower petals bringing the sense of smell
alive, in an otherwise lifeless body; hope in the form of a positive change
coming over a lost boy who sees more meaning in simply hanging out with a
family waiting at a hospital, than in trying to keep his job; hope in the form
of a mother reaching out to another (devoid of histrionics and yet leave you
moist eyed); hope in the form of colleagues
connecting at the only level which matters—that of being simply human.
“October” may not entertain or engage like Shoojit and
Juhi’s “Vicky Donor’ or “Piku”, but it makes that deep human connect, without
the laughter or tears, a single playing-to –the-gallery dialogue or songs. Only
one simple line matters here: “Where is Dan?” It’s an almost perfunctory
question which changes the way a man perceives himself. It does a classic job
of showcasing the ultimate human need to be needed, to be noticed, to be given
the importance he craves.
In its gentle, flowing narrative and meditative contemplation
of life and its coming of age journey with apt rest house locations of a hotel
and a hospital with the beautiful tree providing the answers, the stillness
travels with you outside the theatre, onto the desperate busy streets. And you
take that time to stand and stare, smell that rose, smile at that stranger and
talk to a friend with more empathy.
That lasting, much needed theme of empathy is “October’s
true and meaningful gift.
