Amazon Prime Video’s Mumbai Diaries (2021) opens with a shot of Badhwar Park Jetty in Colaba, Mumbai. A group of men approach the shore, ready to wreak havoc on the city. The first season of the show, created by Nikkhil Advani, is set in a hospital during a terror attack that follows the trajectory of 26/11. Although inspired by real-life incidents, Mumbai Diaries is very much a fictional story. The action unfolds mostly in the fictional Bombay General Hospital, showing how frontline workers rise to the occasion at times of crisis. The first season has everything from emergency surgeries to the threat of a bomb blast. Ahead of the second season, here’s a round-up of the main characters of Mumbai Diaries and everything that has happened to them so far.
He’s the rockstar of Bombay General Hospital and the best trauma surgeon in the business. Allergic to following protocol, Dr. Kaushik Oberoi will do whatever it takes to save his patients. Kaushik is constantly at odds with the local policeman in charge of the hospital, and his unconventional approach often gets him in trouble with the higher-ups. He’s also a workaholic, which has led to a strained relationship with his wife, Ananya. (It probably doesn’t help that he blames her for the miscarriage she suffers.) Kaushik decides that he’s going to quit his position at the hospital to give more time to his home front, but the first terrorist attack hits the city, and the hospital is flooded with victims.
The key conflict of the first season arrives when Kaushik redirects his efforts to treat a wounded terrorist when he realises that he can’t save the life of a police officer. The police, the officer’s widow and the media are outraged, interpreting Kaushik’s behaviour to mean that he chose to save the terrorist rather than the police officer. Kaushik’s explanation is: “We’re doctors. We care about the human body. Judging the human character is not our job.”
By the end of the night, Kaushik emerges battered, bloodied but alive — faced with the prospect of having his medical licence suspended if the medical council finds the decisions he made during the terror attack to be questionable. He and his wife are hopeful of healing their marriage. Kaushik realises that working tirelessly at Bombay General Hospital is what makes him happiest, and in the final episode, he decides not to quit his job after all, much to the joy of his team.
Chitra Das is the Social Services Director of the hospital, responsible for allocating resources and care to patients who do not have any other form of support. She is particularly attached to an elderly woman, affectionately called ‘Beejee’ (grandmother) by the staff, who has been a fixture at Bombay General Hospital for years and has no one else to take care of her. Chitra has comprehensive medical training but is not a practising doctor. We know that she’s a survivor of domestic abuse, and her past includes a mysterious husband from whom she is now estranged. However, in the course of the season, Chitra fights for her patients’ well-being, using her medical knowledge to save lives. She is the only one to take Beejee’s complaints seriously, correctly diagnosing her with listeria and pushing for proper treatment. When the terrorists attack the hospital, Chitra is held hostage and forcibly strapped in a suicide vest. She is rescued before it is too late, and happily reunites with Beejee at the end. She develops a closer friendship with Kaushik, and sees herself as something of a mentor to one of the medical residents, Ahaan Mirza. Ahaan plays a key part in saving Chitra’s life when she’s taken hostage by the terrorists.
Ananya, Kaushik’s wife, works at the luxurious Palace Hotel in Mumbai. On the evening of 26/11, what starts off as a party to felicitate an eminent doctor turns into a nightmare when the terrorists descend upon the hotel. Although still grappling with her miscarriage and the difficulties in her marriage, Ananya keeps her wits about her and focuses on the safety of the hotel’s guests as violence explodes around her. When a police rescue begins to look increasingly unlikely, Ananya takes things into her own hands, evacuating the guests in small groups using her extensive knowledge of the hotel and its service corridors. Her experience serves to make her more empathetic towards Kaushik’s duty as a doctor, and she ultimately encourages him to keep his job at Bombay General Hospital, as long as he promises not to leave her alone again.
Like most journalists, Mansi Hirani is desperate for a good story. When she learns of the attacks, Mansi and her reluctant cameraman drive around South Mumbai, hoping to be the first to break the story. This includes chasing after a police car that is chasing the terrorists, getting caught in the crossfire and barely surviving. But Mansi is convinced that the real story is unfolding in Bombay General Hospital, and is desperate to get inside. However, the police have sealed off the area as there are injured terrorists being treated in the hospital. Not to be deterred, Mansi deliberately gets into a car-crash and injures herself so she can be taken to the hospital.
Her big break comes in the form of the story she files from the hospital, about Kaushik’s decision to treat the terrorist. Mansi’s story makes breaking news and draws the attention of the remaining terrorists, who find their way into Bombay General Hospital in order to extract their teammates. As she witnesses the hospital staff risking their lives to save their patients, Mansi is wracked by guilt and shame. She returns to the newsroom in the morning, only to find that she has been promoted for her display of journalistic ambition. At the end of the season, Mansi is a news anchor — her guilty conscience about misrepresenting the staff of Bombay General Hospital through her story, buried under her ambition.
One of three new residents joining Bombay General Hospital on this fateful day, Diya Parekh is the nepo kid of medicine. Her grandfather funded one of the hospital wings (his bust sits front and centre in the building), and her father is a celebrated oncologist. Self-conscious of the special treatment she receives, Diya is eager to prove herself and make a fresh start. In addition to a dubious past that involves blackmailing a teacher, Diya also suffers from depression. When Kaushik finds out, he gently advises her to confide in her parents. Diya spends much of the season trying to get in touch with her parents, who are trapped at the Palace Hotel. The seaons ends with Diya suffering a terrible tragedy when her mother succumbed to her injuries despite the rescue team’s best efforts.
Sujata, another new resident, is Diya’s polar opposite and openly resentful of her fellow resident. She’s from a humble family from Latur, has never enjoyed any special privileges, and proves herself almost from the very start, when she jumps in to help the staff of Bombay General Hospital as the first victims are brought in after the attack begins. While Ananya has to deal with sexism in the hotel, Sujata has to deal with other kinds of prejudice when one patient refuses to let her treat him. However, in a show of remarkable patience, Sujata does her best for this patient. By the end of the season, she proudly reinforces that she is no longer a trainee and should henceforth be addressed as “Dr. Sujata.”
Rounding up the trio of new residents is Ahaan Mirza, a mild-mannered young man with a gift for handling children. Inspired to become a doctor because of a personal tragedy — as a child, his family called on a priest to exorcise his sister when she had a fatal epileptic fit, instead of rushing her to hospital — Ahaan finds himself accused of collaborating with the terrorists simply because he’s Muslim. Over the season, the nervous-minded Ahaan treats a barrage of victims, processes the loss of losing a beloved patient, and forms a close bond with Chitra. Ahaan’s selfless actions eventually “redeem” him by the end of the show.
As the Chief Medical Officer of Bombay General Hospital, Dr. Subramaniam is perpetually harried by the goings-on at his hospital, and being nudged in the direction of the next crisis by Nurse Cherian (Balaji Gauri). From Kaushik’s blatant rule-flouting to Chitra’s zealous campaigning for Beejee, there’s not a moment’s rest for Dr. Subramaniam. When the terrorists strike the hospital, Dr. Subramaniam must deal with the influx of critical patients and the general chaos that ensues, as well as work alongside the strong-willed police unit stationed at the hospital. Even when the situation appears to be slipping out of his control. Dr. Subramanian sticks to his principles, stepping up to protect his staff and patients at all costs. For him, every individual in the hospital is worth saving, even the ones who are deemed “inconsequential” by the powers that be. Dr. Subramaniam and his team power through the night, and despite it all, life at Bombay General Hospital goes on as usual.
Until the events of Season 2, of course.