Baby Do Die Do

The title for Nachiket Samant’s film is at first perplexing. But then, once I saw what they were trying to do, I smirked. An English transliteration of the protagonist’s name, Baby Karmarkar — how amused one might be by the pun might dictate how much they end up enjoying Samant’s film – because it’s full of dour, made-in-Mumbai humour. Baby (Huma Qureshi, also producer with brother/actor Saqib Saleem) is a deaf/mute female assassin, whose umbrella doubles up as a sneaky pistol. Exploiting Mumbai’s crowded spaces, Baby slips in, kills her target, and slips out. Thanks to the blinders that Mumbai residents have put on, it takes a while for most people to realise there’s a corpse next to them. It’s a smooth, nifty way to get the job done. In the film’s first scene, the makers introduce Baby’s modus operandi inside a Mumbai local.

There’s a genuinely interesting film hidden inside Baby Do Die Do. It just takes far too long to reveal itself, and even then, it refuses to answer the questions that matter. The film opens with a fractured family: a deceased father, an emotionally volatile mother, twin girls, one of whom is deaf and mute. A late-night adventure results in tragedy leaving Baby alone and vengeful. Right away the questions start building—how did the girls suddenly pick up a puppy in an abandoned hotel? It’s the first of many questions the film, co-written by director Nachiket Samant with Jasmeet K Reen and Parveez Shaikh, never answers.

It’s a different kind of reality check to battle the Mumbai monsoons to watch a film, only for the film to remind you that the very same showers might well have taken your life. In Baby Do Die Do, director Nachiket Samant imagines a world where Mumbaikars do not die by falling into manholes or getting swept away in man-made floods. Instead, the season’s biggest accessory – an umbrella – becomes the murder weapon. In an angle that strangely reminded me of Johnny Lever’s Chhota Chhatri in Awara Paagal Deewana, it isn’t just the weapon that adds spice to this dark comedy. Nor is it the fact that Samant’s protagonist is a woman. The third layer – that she is deaf and mute – gives the film the extra quirk it needs.

As an assassin story, Baby Do Die Do is not out of the ordinary. The only novelty is that the brooding hero is a deaf-and-mute hitwoman, not a hitman. The tropes are Freudian and familiar. A childhood tragedy turns this woman named Baby (Huma Qureshi) into a cold-blooded contract killer. She works for a father figure called Papa (Chunky Panday). She’s slick and experienced at her job; a sharp-shooting umbrella is her weapon. She finds a good man (Rachit Singh), and suddenly, the secret is too heavy. She wants out of the profession. She wants to be human. Except it’s not that simple. She’s in too deep. A bloody mess is imminent.

The hired killer in Baby Do Die Do is a woman. She is deaf and mute to boot. She can neither hear anything that anybody says nor spit out her rage in the form of words. She executes her chosen targets in utter silence with an umbrella that is actually a gun. Pretty much like the umbrella in a rain-soaked Mumbai, nothing is what it seems. The pivotal elements in Baby Do Die Do are intriguing all right but do they give the film an edge that serves its purpose? They do only sporadically. Huma Qureshi (who has also produced the film with her brother Saqib Saleem) fronts Baby Do Die Do with the ‘quiet’ confidence that the role calls for. She is unwaveringly consistent. The film is anything but.

Baby Do, sure. Baby Die, okay. But Baby Do Die Do? Can there be a clunkier title? Or is it plain kinky? I went into the theatre wondering what I was in for, and I’m happy to report that fans of desi-style South Korean actioners are in for a treat: Huma Qureshi playing a deaf-mute contract killer comes up with an implacable stare, and a weapon hiding in plain sight, as she goes about decimating her victims one after another, getting support from a solid ensemble. The grey-blue screen, the acid rain, the frequent pull-backs to give us a panoramic view of Mumbai at night, people clawing their way up in chawls and high-rises, and the things they do in the dark when no one’s looking: in this Sion-via-Seoul aesthetic which the film commits to completely, no punches are pulled, and the pace rarely flags.

We often underestimate the power that comes with having a backup plan. This is probably what people with standbys feel when they get cheated on. Or what folks with a lucrative job offer in their pocket think to themselves when they’re presented with peanuts during appraisal season. Having a backup plan affords you the agency you normally wouldn’t have in everyday life. But as immensely privileged a responsibility as reviewing movies may be, it often leaves you without a plan B. And where there is no plan B, there is no power. For two, sometimes three hours, you’re at the mercy of whatever is projected in front of you. No running, no hiding, no sneaking into the theatre next door to sacrifice precious brain cells to Cocktail 2 again. These are the thoughts that run through your mind when you watch something like Baby Do Die Do, the new movie starring the otherwise capable Huma Qureshi.