Nishikant Kamat’s Dombivali Fast (2005) is a highly disconcerting Marathi movie featuring the life of a middle-class bank employee from Dombivali called Madhav Apte. Madhav’s values are in constant conflict with the world he lives in, which perhaps leaves him worse off in life.
Madhav Apte is struggling to preserve a peculiar value system (arguably referred to as बाणा) in a city where compromising on ethical considerations for immediate gains is the second nature of most of its residents. The movie makes a careful distinction from time to time, reminding the viewer that people are perhaps not inherently evil. In a system that rewards pragmatism and punishes ethical behaviour, everyone is simply doing what self-interested individuals do.
The entire movie is based on a couple of days of Madhav Apte’s life wherein a series of events muddle up his mind. Madhav helplessly witnesses his boss break the law to help an unethical businessman, a school demands capitation fee for the admission of his bright daughter, a water tanker contractor makes life difficult by asking for kickbacks and a builder refusing to handover a flat he has purchased. Finally, his wife minces no words when she tells him that all the problems they face as a family are because of his value system and real manliness entails taking action when faced with adversity. At this point, Madhav Apte is a broken man.
A frustrated Madhav Apte, who has been living with the ‘what cannot be cured must be endured’ motto in his life, snaps and decides to take things into his own hands. What follows is a series of events where Madhav takes the law in his own hands to fix things that he had been overlooking for so long. After a breakdown catalyzed by the city’s inhuman grind, Madhav’s response is neither heroic nor revolutionary but absolutely believable, which is the beauty of Nishikant Kamat’s storytelling.
A few minutes into the movie, you are already rooting for Madhav, or perhaps just sympathetic that the society has indeed let him down. With Drishyam, Nishikant Kamat arguably delivered one of the best thrillers in Hindi cinema and Dombivali Fast and its Tamil remake Evano Oruvan, have set a benchmark for movies dabbling with the ‘citizen v system’ genre for Indian cinema.
We have seen a lot of movies where a disgruntled law-abiding citizen decides to take on a corrupt system – Frank Castle (ex-marine) in Punisher: War Zone (2008), McCall (ex-marine) in The Equalizer (2014) and Clyde (ex-CIA) in the Law Abiding Citizen (2009). In Neeraj Pandey’s A Wednesday (2008), Naseeruddin Shah’s character manages to get hold of an explosive and has the technical know-how to keep the Mumbai Police at bay. Even in Nayak: The Real Hero (2001), Anil Kapoor’s Shivaji Rao Gaekwad gets the unique opportunity to become the Chief Minister, albeit for a day, initially.
The character of Madhav Apte is far less glamorous in comparison and far too real a representation of a common man from Dombivali (as he is neither an ex-cop/ military man nor has a ‘very particular set of skills‘) and you cannot help but feel sorry for this simple, honest and hardworking man.
Dombivali Fast captures Mumbai and its social inertia beautifully. Every scene in this movie can be theorized and discussed at length in a class of justice and morality. The movie’s climax left me in my seat for quite a while after the movie ended.
Don’t watch this movie with the hope of getting entertained, but for an insight into the life and struggles of millions of poor and middle-class people, often hastily (and cruelly) summarized as the indomitable spirit of Mumbai.
Thanking Nishikant Kamat for this immortal masterpiece.
Mihir Narvilkar 
Beautiful writing!
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