Bollywood films embracing more disabled characters

From The Times of India:

NEW DELHI, India -- The destitute poet dying of cancer, the coughing mother suffering from tuberculosis — over the decades, Hindi films have often used diseases to create engrossing drama.

Now with changing times, a fresh bunch of ailments, disorders and conditions are afflicting the protagonists: dyslexia, dextrocardia, progeria, and short-term memory loss.

‘Pa’, a forthcoming Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan-starrer, deals with progeria, a condition where a person ages 5-6 times faster than the average individual. Pa’s director R Balakrishnan was toying with the idea of casting the father-son duo in a role reversal.

“The film’s story fructified when a doctor gave me the details of the condition,” he says.

The recent shift in the nature of diseases partly comes from the fact that tuberculosis is no longer life threatening. Cancer remains a major killer but timely discovery offers the possibility of cure. The new ailments provide a certain topicality and give the story a modern feel.

Characters with special ailments gathered focus when Hrithik Roshan played a “developmentally disabled” youth in ‘Koi Mil Gaya’ (2003) (pictured). A slew of films highlighting such conditions have followed since: Aamir Khan’s ‘Taare Zameen Par’ (2007) created huge awareness about dyslexia, a condition where a person has difficulty in reading and writing. Also, Amitabh Bachchan and Kajol brought Alzheimer’s disease in to the limelight in ‘Black’ (2005) and ‘U, Me Aur Hum’ (2008) respectively. Karan Johar’s forthcoming film, ‘My Name is Khan’, turns its attention to autism. Similarly, Aamir suffers from short-term memory loss in the action blockbuster, ‘Ghajini’. The disease plays an important part in the movie’s plot. More recently in ‘Luck’ (2009), Imran Khan had dextrocardia, a rare medical condition of a person born with his heart on the right.

Irregular ailments have always been an integral part of Hindi films. Mental sickness formed a vital part in the construction of movies such as ‘Raat Aur Din’ (1967, where the heroine has multiple personality disorder, and ‘Arth’ (1982), where the heroine is schizophrenic. But as film trade expert Taran Adarsh says, earlier films seldom discussed diseases in detail.

“But now with growing awareness due to television and Internet, script often explains the ailments or mental conditions in detail. The audience also accepts reality more easily today as they are more open to change. Hence you have films like ‘Pa’ and ‘My Name is Khan’,” says Adarsh. Nonetheles as Amol Gupte, who wrote the story and screenplay of TZP, points out that barely 2% of popular Hindi cinema attempts to look at special medical conditions.