Mohan Das - A Man Lost In His Own Nation
Mohandas: Nakul Vaid
Mohandas stands for all that is good and precious. Innocence and simplicity, goodness and talent. He comes from a humble family of basket weavers in a remote corner of India. Those who know to survive by the sweat of their brow.
Meghna Sengupta: Sonali Kulkarni
She is a correspondent for a news channel in New Delhi. Devoted to her profession, she is a head-strong woman who follows her own instincts in pursuit of her objectives.
Kasturi: Sharbani Mukherji
Kasturi is the wife of Mohandas. Unlike presumptions commonly made about a woman from her background, she is bold and courageous. And always by the side of the one she has loved since her youth, Mohandas.
Bishnath: Sushant Singh
Bishnath, in many ways the opposite of Mohandas. He has arrived in life, by whatever means necessary. But he is himself a cog in the wheel of crime that churns the establishment.
Harshvardhan Soni: Aditya Srivastava
Harshvardhan Soni is a fiery committed lawyer from a small town in India. He is a fighter till the end. A desire for justice burns in every human heart and he fully represents that.
Nagendranath: Akhilendra Mishra
Nagendranath, the father of Bishnath. A vestige of the feudal order that clings to power.
Anil Yadav: Uttam Haldar
Anil Yadav is a small-town reporter. He is a go-getter and has many aspirations. He is the one who breaks the story of Mohandas.
Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh: Govind Namdeo
Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh is the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Anuppur. He is named after the brilliant and fiery Hindi poet who penned his noted work in the 50s and 60s in Madhya Pradesh-poems such as 'Chand ka munh Teda Hai.'
Synopsis
Meghna Sengupta, a correspondent working at a news channel in New Delhi, one day receives a videotape from a remote place in Madhya Pradesh, Anuppur. On the tape, a battered young man claims to be the real Mohandas and alleges that someone else has stolen his identity. Someone else is living as 'Mohandas'.
Intrigued by what looks like an unusual small-town scam, Meghna makes a trip to Anuppur. There, she unearths a more harrowing and surreal story. Mohandas is a topper in studies from the poor community of basket-weavers and is overjoyed at long last when he is selected for a good white-collar post in Oriental Coal Mines. But he is kept waiting and waiting to actually get the job. Long afterwards, when he has given up and reconciled to it, he learns that someone else has assumed his name and has already taken his job! When he rushes to protest, he is beaten up and thrown out.
Meghna places this story in the media. Harshvardhan, a lawyer from the district, takes this case of stolen identity to court with the intention of hauling up the usurper. With more bizarre results.
Irony and satire run as undercurrents as the film plumbs the absurd levels to which democratic institutions can be manipulated today. It is also an allegory of how a fake identity displaces the real one in contemporary times.
