Bolly biopic on Bengal’s ‘Ambulance Man’

JALPAIGURU: A production house from Bollywood has trained its lens on ‘Bike Ambulance Dada’ Karimul Haque for a biopic. A worker at a small tea garden with a meagre income of Rs 4,000 a month, Haque has for the past two decades been ferrying the sick and ailing from remote Dooars villages to hospitals on his bike free. Last year, he was awarded the Padma Shri for his untiring effort to save lives.
Vinay Mudgil, who was assistant director in Sooraj Barjat-ya’s Rajshree Productions film ‘Hum Saath-Saath Hain’, is the writer-director of ‘Ambulance Man’ that will trace the life of Haque, who has till now transported over 3,500 patients to hospitals from 20 villages situated in and around Dhalabari.
Though the cast is yet to be finalised, the director has Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Rajkumar Rao and Farhan Akhtar in mind to play Haque. Nawazuddin has acted in the biopic ‘Manjhi — The Mountain Man’, a film on Dashrath Manjhi, a poor labourer from Bihar’s Gaya who single-handedly carved a path through a mountain over 22 years. Farhan, too, has done the biopic on Flying Sikh Milkha Singh, who missed the bronze in the 400 metres sprint at the 1960 Rome Olympics by a proverbial whisker. Rajkumar, too, has acted in a biopic, ‘Shahid’, based on convict-turn-lawyer Shahid Azmi’s life.
The team that is now penning the script will also show the draft to Aamir Khan who was meant to esaay the role of astronaut Rakesh Sharma, but opted out. “We had gone to meet Karimul Haque in his village on December 29 and signed the agreement. A team will return to the village in a month and stay for a few days with Haque to observe his daily routine. The details will come in handy while finalizing the sript. We have some actors in mind but will approach them once the script is ready,” Mudgil’s assistant Aloke Singh told TOI from Mumbai.
Haque is still a bit stunned at the development and finds it hard to believe that someone from Bollywood is interested in making a film on his “unremarkable” life. “I do what I do from the belief that everyone in need of a doctor should get to the hospital. The film-makers have told me they will come to visit me again to take notes on what I do everyday and how I lead my life. They will then take me to Mumbai to interact with the actor who is selected to play my character,” he said.
Two incidents that stand out in Haque's life will play a prominent part in the film. The first was in 1995 when Haque had gone door to door seeking help for his ailing mother who needed urgent medical treatment, but he was not able to find a vehicle to take her to the hospital. Consequently, his mother died at home. Following this, he took a vow to not let anyone else die due to insufficient ambulance coverage. Not long thereafter, a second incident gave Haque the idea of using a motorbike as ambulance. “A fellow worker fell ill and collapsed in the garden. Since a regular ambulance could not reach him in time, I tied him to my back and made him ride pillion to the nearest hospital. He recovered from the illness and inspired me to continue using the bike to ferry the ailing,” he recounted.
What attracted Mudgil to Haque’s life was the intense compassion with which he has relentlessly come to the aid of strangers in distress. “Haque is an inspiration. Despite being financially weak, he never thinks twice on spending energy and fuel in transporting patients to hospitals for free. And he does all this with a smile,” said Singh.
Haque has kept the news of the biopic all hush-hush in the garden. The only other person who knows about it is his wife Anjuwara Begum. Anjuwara isn’t too bothered about who plays the role of her husband or that of her in the movie. All she is wary of is how they portray the two of them in the film. “They can do the entire movie on him. I am only worried about the depiction of on-screen romance between him and me and its repercussion on our simple life. I will die of shame if they show us romancing in the tea bushes,” she says.