‘Doctor G’ a mainstream Bollywood movie directed by Anubhuti Kashyap and produced by Junglee Pictures (2022) portrays a young male doctor Uday Gupta’s (played by Ayushmann Khurrana) journey in the Gynecology department. Uday Gupta, the protagonist aspires to become an Orthopedic Surgeon, an ideal choice for a male doctor, but owing to his low rank ends up taking admission in Gynecology. Uday who ‘lands’ in a Gynecology department of a public hospital in the small town of Bhopal as a postgraduate student faces many challenges. Life in the department is not easy. He justifies his decision of continuing his admission in Gyne which is considered a ‘female stream’ only as a stop-gap arrangement. He is convinced by his friend’s lame explanation that ‘Jo cheez mere paas hai hi nahi, uska ilaaj Kaise karoon’ (how can I treat something which I don’t have) he gets into an argument with a girl asking her to exchange her seat in an Ortho department with his.
In the very first five minutes of the film, we see the protagonist blissfully unaware of his chauvinistic and patriarchal beliefs. The film does not just portray the workings of patriarchy but also attempts to challenge and dismantle the gendered discourse that identifies gynaecology as predominantly a female stream. The audience witnesses the protagonist entering this department with his culturally loaded patriarchal prejudices, encountering unfamiliar situations that confront the taken-for-granted ideas that subsequently transform him into a better human being.
Dr Uday’s journey in this all-women gynaecology department begins with the experience of ragging by senior women colleagues who use all-gender tropes to tease him. It is worthwhile to note that the discomfort and unease that Uday feels due to his assumptions about women in the profession is also shown to be shared by his senior female colleagues. They do not accept his entry into this department naturally. They initially discourage him by telling him stories of earlier male students who could not complete the course. As the film progresses one sees how Uday’s choices and his behaviour toward all women close to him- his mother, girlfriend, and colleague Fatima- have their roots in his gendered socialization where he fails to listen to women’s voices who have for long told him, ‘Tumhe landkiyon ki awaj sunai nahi deti’ (You cannot listen to (understand) women’s voice!) This failure to ‘listen’ and understand women harm his professional life.
It is significant to understand how the connection that the film tries to establish between gendered socialization, his male chauvinism and his professional failure to perform as a good gynaecologist in a way reinforces the gendered understanding of gynaecology as a female profession which the film intends to dismantle. In other words, it is almost assumed that the key to success in a gynaecology department is to overcome one’s patriarchal, male chauvinist selfhood. Had he got admitted in not-so-feminine specializations like for instance Ortho this may not have been required.
Another way in which the film attempts to single out the gynaecology profession is by valorizing something called a doctor’s touch. The only person who questions Uday’s integrity and expects his serious commitment by challenging the gendered understanding that he is carrying about the gynaecology profession is the Head of the Department (HOD), Dr Nandini. Her advice to him to drop the ‘male touch’ and adopt a ‘doctor’s touch’ as a key to success is one of the strongest statements made in the film about gynaecology and the medical profession in general.
After receiving a warning from the HOD, Uday starts working in the hospital seriously and tries to develop the doctor’s touch. However, his half-hearted attempt and causal approach towards the so-called feminine profession of Gyne land him in trouble. In one of the settings, he happens to examine a female patient without a female attendee in the hospital; devoid of ‘doctor’s touch’, Uday’s examination makes the woman patient uncomfortable which results in a violent attack on Dr Uday and the consequent filing of a legal complaint against him. This failure of following a code of medical ethics stemming from his casual approach towards the profession because of his gendered self makes the situation worse for him.
Starting from the gendered hierarchy within the medical profession the film touches upon the complex issues within the profession such as violence against doctors, the complexities and nuances of the doctor-patient relationship, and also to an extent the nature of the medical profession with its growing internal contradictions. On the one hand, when Dr Uday gets beaten up by the patient, he also receives a God-like treatment from another patient for saving her baby. Expressions like ‘aap ne hamare bacche ko bachaya, hamare liye aap hi bhagwan hai’ (you saved my baby’s life, for us you are God), underline the societal discourse that accords social status to the ‘healers’ in any society. It is important to mention here that by granting medical professionals this status, respect, and privilege society expects them to be competent, altruistic, and moral and would conscientiously put patients’ needs at the forefront. The very appeal made to Dr Uday in the film for achieving ‘Doctor’s touch’ is also a reminder of the duties and responsibilities and the code of conduct associated with the noble profession and the mores of the social contract it inherits.
The film attempts to address the question of the code of medical ethics and the way it is operationalized in the profession. Even though the film, valorizes this code of ethics to establish the puritan nature of the medical profession, it also does challenge the operationalization of these codes of ethics in the everyday practice of the medical profession. Through various instances, the film underlines the futility of the impractical way the ‘rules’ associated with this code of ethics are operationalized in everyday practice.
The film successfully attempts to shed light on the serious issues in the medical profession such as internal hierarchies, violence, doctor-patient relationship, etc. for the first time in mainstream Hindi cinema. The fact which also appears as a central theme of the film even if is presented in a slightly overstated manner that the doctor’s gender plays a crucial role in the health-seeking behaviour of the patients.
Doctor G challenges the gendered understanding that gynaecology is a woman’s job, a female profession. It is also a strong commentary on the medical profession in general. Among various other things, it is this journey of a male doctor of finally finding the doctor’s touch which is portrayed in the film as a central theme that contains a strong claim that only doctors can transcend their limitations as human beings due to the nature of their profession. Similarly, this journey of finding a doctor’s touch is also portrayed as this young man’s journey of evolving into a better human. A strong claim about the nobility of the medical profession is made. Thus, even though the film attempts to demystify certain notions about the medical profession, by eulogizing what they call a doctor’s touch it ends up reinforcing the common societal discourse about the inherent noble nature of the medical profession.
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Mayuri Samant is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE), Pune. Madhura Joshi is a researcher working at GIPE.