Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara -2005- YASH RAJ DVD

Professor Uttam Chaudhary is a retired Hindi teacher who lives with his daughter and young son in the city of Mumbai. He is suffering from what is laughingly called ‘old age’ – brief periods of forgetfulness, blanks in memory. Little does anyone realize that the problems are much deeper, and that this is just the beginning of a journey that will end in a man becoming a prisoner of his mind. As his memories start to fade, a childhood trauma surfaces – a memory of being accused of murdering Gandhi. The more his life is whitewashed, the stronger this one memory remains. As his world turns increasingly hostile, Prof. Chaudhary sees everything as an enemy…his house is a jail, his family are his captors. And in the midst of all this is the story of his daughter. A single woman, working to not only support the family monetarily, but is also the only lifeline that can save her father from drowning in the universe his mind is creating. It is the story of the power of one person’s strength, hope and determination in pulling their loved one away from the abyss.

The film structures the narrative by telling a simple story of a man’s illness and his daughter’s love, understanding and commitment to find her father’s treatment, overcoming a host of problems through her faith and determination. It is a film that connects two disparate events together. One, of a small middle class family in present day Mumbai struggling to come to terms with the fact that the head of the family is now suffering from early dementia and two, the assassination of the father of the nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The Professor’s often repeated and exasperated denial ‘Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara’ is rooted back in an era when a truth seeking son of India became the father of a newborn nation. Someone killed this man, but his truth survives… he lives as long as his ideals breathe within us.