“Kabhi kabhi apne cause ke liye jo acha hota hai, woh apne logon ke liye acha nahi hota,” Dev, the protagonist of Amazon Prime Video’s Shehar Lakhot, explains to a righteous tribal leader. A career fixer, Dev knows when to say the right thing, except here he might be disclaiming a truism he has begun to internalise. It is in essence, the plot of this eight-episode series set in an arid settlement located in the middle of nowhere. A man returns to his hometown, as an outsider merely interested in its new-found material promise. He is transformed, however, as a haunted, unreconciled past becomes the vessel to row through the present’s churn. It’s a familiar plot, garnished with familiar small-town devices that make for a well-nursed noir, sans a sense of mystery or even purpose.
Dev, played by Priyanshu Painyuli, is a city-bred broker who does odd-jobs for urban real estate magnates. He arrives in Lakhot, a town he left in a hurry. Dev is perpetually lightly stoned, wet around the ears and is the last to read the room. Neither a go-getter or a socio-political maven, he is merely desensitized to trauma and conflict. In one scene, he practically watches his brother – a brother he does not like, mind you - get beaten up without exhibiting the urge to intervene. He keeps in his lane, so to speak. At the time of his arrival, Lakhot is on fire, in more ways than one. Tribal leader Vikas (Chandan Roy) is leading an agitation against the annexation of tribal land by the marble-mining mafia. Political leader Kairav (Chandan Roy Sanyal), on the other hand, is looking to sell whatever is left.
Dev’s arrival isn’t welcomed by his perturbed family, especially his warring brother Jay. In an unexpected turn of events, Jay is murdered, turning Dev into the prime suspect. The disinterested protagonist suddenly becomes the dishevelled subject of a mystery that hits him in the head, more than it punches him in the gut. Dev makes for a fascinating protagonist except when his lack of angst, rage or suspicion, trivialise the commotion around him. Supplementing his somewhat clueless appeal is a diverse cast of colourful characters. Police inspector Rajbir (Manu Rishi Chadha) is both goofy and earnest, while his subordinate Pallavi (Kubbra Sait) is mysteriously reticent yet purposeful. The murderous sibling duo of Bhi and Bho are audaciously cutthroat while the corrupt journalist Antariksh (Abhilesh Thapliyal) is unreliable yet vaguely determined. It’s all grey in a sea of dusty gold brown.
There are sub-plots aplenty, with colourful vices and curious streaks attributed to the show’s exhibition of small-town eccentricities. Orgies, queer stories and notorious affairs are all part of the texture here as an indecipherable small town is parsed through the furnace of exaggeration. Even white women turn up here to do illicit things, which is a ruse, one too far for a show that uses provocation as a stop-gap for a narrative that can’t quite lift the stakes. Director and co-creator Navdeep Singh, who gave us the masterful Manorama Six Feet Under, gives us a familiar landscape but cuts it in despairingly modern and maybe stressed ways. Rather than grounded in local flavour, Lakhot seems excerpted from a place where modernism’s homogenising anxieties overwrite a sense of being. The result is a bizarre mix of urban ticks and small-town contrivances.
Thankfully for Shehar Lakhot, the cast and the visual direction are superb. Even if an emotional well can’t be dipped into the location’s grunge, sobriety comes through. A place where everyone knows everyone is bound to have a few crossed wires, and here classmates, friends and foes all meet, curb after curb, painfully inter-linked and maybe cursed to endure collectively. Painyuli finally gets to stretch his feet in a large role and does justice to a character which isn’t exactly written with a razor-sharp tip. His nonchalance sags the narrative, but he stumbles through it with unhurried bemusement. The rest of the cast, including both Chandans, are exceptional as well, elevating material that though it flickers every now and then, seems headed nowhere in particular. Intrigue exists in service of the genre as opposed to the story.
Navdeep Singh has an eye for mysteries and thrillers, and he paints them in his own gentle image. Contemplatively paced, his cinema teeters on the brink of disenchantment, a worldview from where the protagonists, almost always, don’t want to carry forward the burden of the narrative. They aren’t young chevaliers or chauvinists out to impose their curry-cut mediocrity, but simply floaters who find themselves swept onside by mysteries. Mysteries that aren’t exactly adrenaline-pumping in the manner true crime often is, but abound with unease and noir-esque untruths. So much so, you practically amble through them, without the urgency of cause or the mania of retribution. Stories that fancy an explosion till the very end without ever choosing to do so. It’s fascinating at feature film length, but over eight plodding hours it can test your patience.
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