Dr Arora Gupt Rog Visheshagya review: Imtiaz Ali’s cold-streak refuses to climax, spills onto SonyLIV

Better filmmakers than Imtiaz Ali have rotted in director jail while he has been allowed to perpetrate crimes against cinema called Jab Harry Met Sejal and Love Aaj Kal 2. But we live in a world where even a show like She can be rewarded with a second season, so the joke’s on all of us. I was appalled by the gender politics of that Netflix series, in which an undercover cop allows herself to be exploited physically to solve cases, only to realise that she gets off on it. But as fundamentally misguided as She was, it’s nothing compared to the utter lunacy on display in Dr Arora.

The show’s premise sounds like something Ali might have pitched to Ayushmann Khurrana at some point, before the actor (correctly) turned it down and put together a rival project (Doctor G) for himself. Or maybe it was the other way around? Who knows. But it’s clear that Khurrana’s mainstream success at tackling taboo topics has facilitated the emergence of stories such as this. In Dr Arora, Mishra plays the titular ‘gupt rog visheshagya’ — a sex doctor — whose personal history with erectile dysfunction compelled him to treat others with similar problems.

Over the course of the show’s eight-episode first season — yes, it ends on a cliffhanger that serves as an open threat for season two — Dr Arora treats a diverse bunch of patients, one of whom may or may not be a rapist. In fact, the show opens with a scene in which this man discovers, while committing sexual assault, that he cannot get it up. The show, of course, pretends that the man isn’t at fault, but every moment leading up to the sexual encounter makes him out to be a predator. Worse, it suggests that the woman is lying when she accuses him of assault, which is a political statement whose worrying connotations have clearly escaped the show’s makers, especially Ali.

I blame him because he’s the show’s creator, even though five or six people have been credited as the writers, while Sajid Ali and Archit Kumar have been deputised as the directors. The fact that the entire team thought it was not only okay to open the show with this scene, but subsequently ask the audience to sympathise with this character, has to be one of the most misguided creative decisions in recent Hindi cinema history. It’s simple, no consent was given by the woman; and her silence means no. The show needed to be clearer — this is hardly something you want to be ambiguous about.

But guess what, it gets worse. In episode three, Dr Arora diagnoses a young female patient — she wears western clothes, so watch out! — with gonorrhoea, and proceeds to ask her a series of invasive questions in a disgusted tone of voice. Dr Arora straight-up vilifies the woman for having multiple sexual partners and then banishes her from ever consulting him again because he surmises that she’s a sex worker. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it didn’t. At least not until episode seven, when Dr Arora has a change of heart completely out of the blue.

Now, it’s not entirely unheard of for gynaecologists to cast aspersions on female patients even today, so on paper, there’s nothing wrong with a scene in which Dr Arora berates the young woman for doing what she has to. The issue — and this is something a lot of Indian filmmakers don’t seem to understand — that while characters can behave in a problematic manner, the film or show has to acknowledge this behaviour as being problematic. Otherwise, it is endorsing it.

So, purely on the grounds that Dr Arora is projected as the protagonist — somebody, by definition, deserving of our empathy — the show is excusing his actions. Granted, he evolves in later episodes, but it’s never really revealed why he had such a deep-rooted disgust for sex workers in the first place, and what motivated him to change his stance at all. It makes no sense; you’d assume that sex workers would be a key demographic for a sex doctor, wouldn’t you? But Dr Arora’s ill-defined prejudice against them is like a physiotherapist being bigoted against pro athletes.

Utterly dissatisfied with merely two tone-deaf storylines, Dr Arora finds a way to insert — no pun intended — at least a couple more. For the sake of not repeating myself, I’ll describe just one. This, too, involves the dude who was accused of assault in episode one. He has a pretty neighbour, you see, whose husband is always away on ‘tours’. This woman has been making eyes at him from her balcony forever, and one day, she invites him upstairs under the pretence of some house work. But the man has performance anxiety again, so he excuses himself and retreats to his home. For three whole months, he avoids the woman altogether, having decided to follow Dr Arora’s strict instructions.

After he completes the prescribed course of medication, he agrees to visit his suitor again. There’s sexual tension in the air. But the moment he grabs her hand, she screams and accuses him of trying to take advantage of her. And you’re left with nothing but whiplash at having been deliberately misled. Again.

To be clear, it’s okay if the man has misread her signals — these things happen — but unlike the last time, the show wasn’t trying to be vague here. It was telling us, the audience, that the woman was clearly leading him on. And for her to accuse him of misbehaviour like this is yet another concerning cultural statement that the show, its creator and writers are making — inadvertently or not — about the idea of consent. Ali now has more than three strikes against him for how he perceives women. Perhaps it’s time to take a good look at how we perceive him.

Dr Arora – Gupt Rog Visheshagya
Creator – Imtiaz Ali
Cast – Kumud Mishra, Gaurav Parajuli, Vivek Mushran, Ajitesh Gupta, Vidya Malavade, Sandeepa Dhar, Shekhar Suman
Rating – 1.5/5