Kabir Singh- A Doctor's Review

So I found time to watch the latest bollywood release- Kabir Singh with Shahid Kapoor and a few beautiful women I’m not bothered to learn the names of. After a long time, medical profession and live of doctors was the baseline for a very mainstream movie, the last one was Munna Bhai MBBS, and it was a wonderfully entertaining with great social message. So I had a lot of expectations. It was a remake of the south Indian movie Arjun Reddy and I’m not familiar with it at all. And lets just say, in spite of a watchable story line, it let me down in so many parameters, so many dimensions, it won’t be easy writing this. So first lets start with the good.


Almost everyone of the cast member are great actors and it showed (other than the various beautiful romantic entanglements of Dr Kabir Singh, MS Orthopedics, thats why I’m not bothered to learn their names). Shahid Kapoor does an incredible job of portraying an aggressive, testosterone fuelled doctor with severe anger issues and blatant disregard for rules and regulations of the Hospital, College, hostel etc. The story has parallels with my very own ‘college love story’ except that mine crashed and burned like ‘blue ice falling out of aeroplane lavatory’ before it even started.


The story started too unrealistic for my taste, given that I’m in the medical profession myself, and have met tons of doctors of many streams, most of whom are very kind, courteous and follow the strict rules and regulations out of fear of authorities, if not for personal principles and ethics. But as time passed, it stayed with me and wasn’t exactly predictable, so thumbs up for that. Further after a roller coaster of ups and downs, it was satisfying to see the lead meet an unexpected happy ending, with the notion of ones first love being one’s strongest, even though it made me feel shitty about my romantic life cuz I don’t think I’m ever falling in love again. ;(  Also appreciable was the debate against arrange marriage which I have truly come to dislike now a days. The music was good as well. So thats all that was good. Now diving deeper into what the movie represents and its repercussions on the society.


Its not hidden from anyone how the medical profession is the hot topic of discussion in the entire country right now. First Bengal violence against doctors, then the Bihar Paediatric Encephalopathy political blame game. I was clearly hoping for a more wholesome representation of doctors given this current political scenario. But here comes a doctor who is always high on marijuana, wasted on ‘desi daru’, even before his romantic life meets tragedy. And then other junior doctors and nursing staff lighting his weed cigarettes, pouring him scotch right during/ after/ before performing operations, I mean do they even understand how big of a crime they are representing as a pre-operative custom, and no one left or right even batting an eye. May be in North Korea, but not here in India. There might be a few such evil insensitive doctors but even they would make efforts to hide it, and not do it in front of/with support of his entire operative team. So thats completely unrealistic garbage.


Then comes ugly testosterone fuelled anger, and accompanying utter disregard for rules and regulations. What kind of college is it that a single resident over powers even the principal. There is not a single authority that questions his macho rebellious attitude that involves kissing strange girls without their permission on campus. Thats not ragging, thats sexual harassment at workplace/ institution (#Metoo). What college has residents picking up female students from first year lecture halls right before lectures, everyday, I mean does she has any worries regarding her attendance?? I missed a lot of classes too, but very late in third year when I absolutely hated my college and paid for it extensively.  What college hostel allows a female student staying in male hostel alone with a guy, where they are constantly having sex. The hostel has no issues with it?? Come on!! Please take me to that college, I will file for removal of its license. That college is unsafe for both its male and female students as well as patients and it must be closed down!


There are so many ugly traits in that character that its hard to feel an emotional pain when he loses his love. I was more like- very good, now run girl, run(away)!!!


But my biggest problem was full display of toxic masculinity and complete disregard of a girl’s choices/freedom. If I were that female student, I would have slapped him with a sexual harassment case. How dare he touch another female student/colleague without her permission. Ragging is altogether a different thing, thats sexual harassment. Ragging is itself an offensive act that I hate, and to be honest we never had any ragging at all in our medical college. I guess we were lucky! Thank you BVP for your strict no-ragging rules. But no parent would send there kid to that college. Not even the boys, given the amount of violence happening in the hostels/fields/partys. It did get a lot of hooting and shrieking from the cheap crowd I was sitting along, in a cheap movie theatre that wasn’t even air conditioned, but that was I guess what the movie makers were aiming for, that was their target audience and its sad.


At the end of the movie when he loses his medical license to practice, the movie wanted me to feel sad for the said character, but as an educated person all I could think was ‘he didn’t deserve anything less, in fact why didn’t it happen much sooner’. You might think I’m nitpicking or being overly sensitive, but given the hardships we doctors are facing today, I was truly hoping for a more sensitive portrayal of doctors in general.


In order to make Dr Kabir Singh uber cool, the movie makers crossed all boundaries of medical ethics, severe training and the strictest of laws, rules and regulations we are bred in- be it at college, hostel, ICU etc. A lot of us have lots of fun, drinking-smoking-girlfriends but we keep it to our personal lives.  We don’t bring it to the ICU, cuz it endangers the patient’s life, which means it endangers our entire career and no doctor is that loosy-goosy with their licensed career for which they have worked extremely hard for.  Showing doctors in this light, is further building a narrative of Doctors not giving a shit about their patients, which is causing some illiterate dillitants to attack and injure us, sometimes to the level of mortality as clearly seen in recent Bengal incident. I just had higher hopes.


In spite of my long list of complaints I will give 3 stars to the movie out of 5 and recommend it as a one time watch, for Shahid’s great acting alone. Todos.