(Contains spoilers) In the eighth and final episode of 'Lootere', which released on Thursday, May 2, the body count rises at an alarming rate, things spiral out of control, and chaos is manufactured and wielded to bring a new set of people into power and riches. Hansal Mehta, who brought series like 'Scam 1992 - the Harshad Mehta Story' and 'Scoop' to OTT, is credited as showrunner on 'Lootere'.
Who, you may ask, are the titular lootere in the series? The shortest answer is that it varies depending on where you are in the series. At various points, a ragtag band of Somalian pirates with a strapping leader by the name of Barkhad (Martial Batchamen Tchana), are the most obvious surface-level lootere. But they are hardly the only ones taking something by force, in a show where the struggle for power and riches plays out over and over again.
Lootere: The ending explained
In the very last scene of director Jai Mehta's 'Lootere', the camera zooms in to take a very tight close-up of the face of a smiling Somalian militant, Faisal, affiliated with the fictional Al Muharib.
Faisal has just set off a bomb in a public place somewhere in Somalia and shot a woman in the crowd. There's chaos, just as Faisal had intended. That he shoots a Somalian woman just minutes before the end of the limited series feels important. It seems to say: this is what transfer of power can look like at its worst, and it's not about reclaiming Somalia for the Somalians - a claim that some politicians make earlier in the series. Faisal is one of the new faces of power and money in the cash-poor country.
Indeed, transfer of power is both a theme and the context for the limited series created by Hansal Mehta.
The show begins with Vikrant Gandhi (Vivek Gomber) worrying about a shipment of guns coming into Mogadishu, Somalia, on the UK Kyival. The guns are for Al Muharib - a fictional militant group. Vikrant is port authority president, but election for the presidency is coming up and he needs to win to continue smuggling things like these guns in and out of Somalia.
Things start to go awry when a former ally, Tawfiq, decides to run for port presidency as well. Vikrant can longer get the guns into Mogadishu port without fear of inspection. A series of events leads to the ship getting re-routed to a historical town, Harardhere, in Somalia where pirates hijack the ship and kill one crew member.
The transfer of power from Vikrant, an Indian immigrant to Somalia, to Tawfiq, a native, is one of the bigger powerplays in the series. There is also the power struggle between pirate leader Barkhad and his younger brother who is so keen to take the reins, he kills his brother and shoots one of the crew members dead just because he starts to empathise with her and sees that as a sign of weakness in himself.
As mentioned already, the body count skyrockets. Most of the crew, pirates (including Ismael), the shipowner's son's date in Ukraine, and a member of Vikrant's family and several of his household staff (including Ismael's mother) are dead by the time the credits roll for the last time.
Somalian pirates and Indians on the African continent
We've all read or heard stories of Somalian pirates hijacking ships manned by Indian crew. This collective memory is the irresistible hook that pulls you to 'Lootere' the first time. Whether you stay on, depends on a number of factors. Including, whether you have the time and patience to let a complex plot with many twists unfold to reveal the kernel - grabbing power and making the most money.
Vikrant Gandhi and a handful of Indians in the series are better off than most of the locals in the series. Vikrant's wife Avi, played by Amruta Khanvilkar, is born and brought up in Somalia where her wealth and even the colour of her skin sets her up for a life of privilege.
Early in the show, there are intermittent noises of reclaiming Somalia for the Somalians. It's a ruse, but the argument has heft. For generations, the native Somalians have been denied privileges that flow to the 'outsiders' - the one-time immigrants who found fortune and fame in Somalia, and made the land their home. The income inequality is jarring. From Vikrant's palatial home to the shanties of Harardhere, they seem to occupy different worlds.
The Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi crew members on board the UK Kyival meet a sad end - mostly. Some members are killed by pirates. Many die of asphyxiation when the pirate set the ship on fire. The captain (an on-point Rajat Kapoor) and two other members make it off the ship alive, but the series doesn't tell us if they survive a chance encounter with gunmen even before they can get out of Harardhere.
The Somalian pirates who dominated the series are mostly dead, too. The rancorous Koombe is killed by a crew member. Barkhad is killed by his own brother who wants to be chief.
In fact, from that early moment in the series when the contest for Mogadishu port presidency starts heating up, Vikrant gets onto a slippery slope. As he tells his wife and sons in the final moments of the last episode - he doesn't know how or when things got so out of control.
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