I had not written any serious movie reviews so far but wanted to write one after watching the Tamil movie titled ‘Orange Mittai’ in August 2015.  A simple story very well shown on screen. I have enjoyed watching some of Vijay Sethupathi’s  earlier films (“Soothu kavvum” for example) and was keen to see this movie. I have rarely gone to movies alone and after a very long time, I watched this alone. As someone growing old, it is a good thing to learn. That happens to be the theme of the movie as well. It is about a father abandoned (Vijay Sethupathi) to live alone by his son. The hero of the movie is a paramedic working with 108 Emergency service ambulance. The father who lives alone, keeps calling the 108 service pretending to be ill. On one such call, the hero, Ramesh Thilak, shows up to help. The whole movie is about the interactions between these two men. Ramesh would have lost his father about a year ago. They both realize that it is easier to be a father of some one else’s son and son of some one else’s father. Let me not give the story here in case any of you are planning to watch it. It’s worth your time.

Another movie I watched in 2015 was Manjhi, the mountain man in Hindi. In this movie, Manjhi the hero is unable to take his wife to a hospital on time when she was ready to deliver their second kid. They live in a village in Bihar which is not connected by road. The villagers cross a hill on foot to catch a bus. Manjhi and a friend carry her on a blanket crossing the hill on foot. By the time they reach the hospital, she delivers a healthy baby and dies. No ambulance could reach them for help! Several Governments came and went and the village was not connected by a road. After his wife dies, Manjhi takes it as his life’s mission to build a road by himself breaking down the mountain with a hammer and chisel. He succeeds after 22 years! The Government made it a proper road in 2011, 30 years after he completes it and four years after he died. The road has been named after him recently.

I remembered both these movies this evening, as we had a talk by Dr. Sudhakar Varanasi, who headed the 108 Emergency services project in the initial stages of planning and implementation.  He was one of the Vice-Presidents in Satyam Computers. His talk was arranged by the Al(l)chemis’s Society in IPC Department. This was started as an ambitious project by Satyam Computers in (the united) Andhra Pradesh around 2005, when they had just become a billion dollar company. Dr. Sudhakar thought of the emergency services after one of his friends from the USA died in a road accident near Bangalore as an ambulance didn’t reach on time. The title of his talk today was ‘Working with head and heart aligned’. Though India had three phone numbers for calling police (100), fire service (101) and ambulance (102), we did not have one emergency number like the 911 in the USA and 112 in many parts of Europe. Dr. Sudhakar and team created 108 as an emergency number which can be used for police, fire or ambulance. With the old 100 number, there were very few lines and it was answered by the police directly. 108 is answered by trained professionals and they can attend thousands of calls simultaneously. Andhra Pradesh Government started financing the project soon and Gujarat followed it next. Now this service is available in more than 20 states all over the country. It appears that Delhi and West Bengal are yet to go for it. I was on a road trip in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala last week and I could see several 108 Ambulances on the road rushing to help.

Dr. Sudhakar has an interesting background. He did his MSc in Physics from IIT Kharagpur and a Ph. D. at the Molecular Biophysics Unit in IISc and followed it with postdoctoral work at the Aerospace Engineering Department. After serving in the Indian Institute of Science till 1990, he started his own software company and joined Satyam Computers later. Today he is a Chief Mentor at Emergent Institute in Bengaluru. It is interesting to think about the eventual success stories of Manjhi the Mountain Man and Dr. Sudhakar Varanasi! If a service like 108 was available 50 years ago and if every village in India was connected by road, there would have been no need for Manjhi the Mountain Man. In any case, irrespective of where you are and what your background is, if you decide to do something and have the patience and perseverance, it can be done.

In case you would like to know more about the three topics and AL(l)chemist’s Society, the following links would help.

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Mittai

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjhi_-_The_Mountain_Man

3. http://www.emergentinstitute.com/the-team-2/

4. http://ipc.iisc.ac.in/~alchemie/