TATHASTU Director Anubhav Sinha Starring: Sanjay Dutt, Amisha Patel, & Others Rating: PG UK Release 28 April 2006

A man who brings a child in this world, holds him while he takes his first steps and cries the first time his son smiles at him, can’t just can’t let that son slip away between his fingers into a dark and deadly silence. The man, Ravi (Sanjay Dutt), was only a factory worker. He was married to a middle-class homely girl, Sarita (Amisha Patel). He was only earning 5 thousand rupees a month. He was only another man in the crowd. But what the system didn’t factor was that he was a father.

It’s not everyday that a healthy eight year old collapses while playing cricket. It’s not everyday that a healthy eight year old has a hole in his heart and needs a heart transplant. It’s not everyday that a factory worker has to raise lakhs of rupees to save his son’s life. But this was not everyday. And this was not an everyday father. It was an extra-ordinary day and an ordinary man rose to become an extra-ordinary father.

He tried to do it the right way. Asking for help from his office, the insurance company, the loan sharks. But no one responded to his pleas while his son was not responding to medication. This desperate father kept a stone on his heart, a gun in his hand and grabbed the system by its horns to get his son a new heart.

He held up the hospital waiting room. And laid out his conditions. The police did their best to talk him out of it. When talk didn’t work, their dirty minds did. But this father was determined. His wife, one doctor, one cop and million of ordinary people joined his battle. The one question the nation’s common folk was asking’ “Could this happen to us?” It had happened to Ravi, and Ravi was not asking question, he was giving answer.

But it was far more complicated than it oppeared. Can a father beat the system with a gun and a heart full of courage? And ones the politicians got involved, mess was bound to follow. And the media’s passion for mess and sensational software added to the dirty game.

He was only a father who wanted a heart for his dying son. He was a simple man with a simple request. But when they turned him down, everything suddenly changed. He made his decision, looked up at the sky. Maybe he heard… God answer his prayer.