“Karamo se dariye, Ishwar se nahi. Ishwar maaf kar deta hai, karam nahi,” a character declares in an episode from Disney+Hotstar’s Karmma Calling. It’s also an adage that appears on-screen in writing, as a way of proclaiming the cyclical nature of consequence, of bad deeds returning in the form of vengeful settlements. Every action enacted to persecute the innocent, the show tells us, has an equally reprimanding reaction. Unlike real life, though, this reaction in storytelling is visceral, glamorous and absolute. The hammily titled Karmma Calling is a thrilling, soapy and at times overblown story of revenge. It’s glitzy, sensual, a bit self-involved and led by a terrific performance by Raveena Tandon.
Tandon plays Indrani Kothari, the uncrowned queen of the Alibaug social circuit, a go-to haven for Mumbai’s elite. Set in the beach town, the show begins with a cold open. A body drops lifeless into the receding ocean, with a wedding ceremony as the backdrop. There are clueless incumbents, recognisable characters and a handful of guilty-looking folks sniffing in on the mystery. It’s a terrific opening, and it sets the precedent for a show that plays out like the epilogue of a mystery, gradually explained through a vast topology of grief and injustice. Central to this topology is Karmma Talwar, Indrani’s daughter-in-law to be played by Namrata Sheth.
As tragedy unfolds on the night of her wedding, the show flips back the pages to a time when Karmma, a young, mysteriously rich woman set foot on the overpriced land in Alibaug; her sights lustily set on the Kothari family. Her intentions are menacing, the ceremonial fervour a guise. The Kotharis are more target than aspirational podiums. Not that they have few problems of their own. Indrani’s husband is a habitual cheater, her daughter an entitled brat and her son, a naive hunk of gym-calibrated meat. Every person of the extended Kothari clan Karmma targets, is paying for a misdoing. It’s soapy and uncomplicated but done well, also satisfying from a voyeuristic standpoint.
Adapted from the American TV series Revenge by Ruchi Narain (also the director), Karmma Calling - at least on the face of it - is an uncomplicated tale of retribution. A young girl returns to take down an influential family that wrongfully put her father away. Rather than power through with legal measures and sobering exposés, though, she chooses to go about it in the pulpiest manner possible – infiltrate the Kotharis. “To betray someone, you have to first earn their trust,” Karmma says at one point as a sort of pledge. She gets back at uncles, accomplices and the men and women who colluded or at least stayed silent in the face of her father’s lonesome suffering. This, however, isn’t the neighbourly family feud of India’s TV soaps but a heady, salacious cross-border operation that unveils a rich tapestry of grief and deprivation on both sides. Even the forthright Indrani is much more than her pomp and ruthless posture, her riches and the glowing but insincere respect it commands in closed circles.
As a twisty narrative of episodic denouements, the series harks back to the era of daily soaps. As an examination of the rich, it fiddles and fumbles with authenticity. The palaces, the highbrow shenanigans of Alibaug’s elite are showcased, but without any real nuance or insight. As a study of womanhood, the series is fascinating if not judiciously distributed. Led by two women, it’s a story that happily relegates a lot of men to the sidelines, and is richer for it. This allows the story to lean on some ferocious feminine energy, the larger complexities of which are handled by Tandon. In one scene, she overhears her husband discussing a political situation with an influential politician. The moment she intervenes, the men huddle up and ask her to, in effect, ‘leave it to the guys’. The resentment, the indignity of it all, is writ large on Indrani’s face. Even the most formidable women eventually find men capable of shunning them.
Tandon gets to stomp the yard of this show. She is the varnished queen, the compromised covenant and that toothsome bridge between the story’s vanity and its humanity. She looks spectacular and finds that balance between shaky and resolute. Sheth is adequate as the seductive but shrewd antagonist, trying to bring her down. The performances of a chunk of the supporting cast feel raw and unrefined, as if confused about the era or genre they belong to. But it’s really Tandon’s prerogative to ground the show in emotion, guilt and a bizarre sense of disenfranchisement. For all the power she commands, she also looks helpless and lonely. The datedness of the premise is palpable but the show’s gushy, modern updates, its creamy language of expression, is addictive nonetheless.
Karmma Calling is now streaming on Disney+Hotstar.
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