Sometimes I feel like I’m Col. Nathan Jessop, standing guard and watching everything so you won’t have to, because most of you will not be able to handle mistakes Netflix, Amazon Prime and other platforms make when they choose to show you drivel like Ghoomketu, Betaal and Khan No.1. I also try to sit through shows like Panchayat and fail because my imagination anticipates the key to the Panchayat office dropped into a pile of Ragubir Yadav’s shit baking under the Sun in the open fields somewhere. I don’t know how people find that funny and tell me to have patience because the show will improve upon acquaintance. Thankfully, Paatal Lok showed up mid-May.
If I watched Paatal Lok when it was released on May 15 on Amazon Prime, why am I reviewing it now? As the little kid in the ad asked, ‘Tera sabun slow hai kya?’ Perhaps, ‘review’ is an inadequate word. Because I’m just going to talk about how this show explores relationships without getting weepy (as in the very popular This Is Us) or drunk (Four More Shots anyone?). Of course, since the lockdown, we've all beeen reflecting on our relationships, eh?
By now everyone has watched Thappad (the movie) on Amazon Prime as well. Please do. It's interesting how that one slap is put on record and its validity questioned. The film showed lives of other women affected by domestic violence too. In this show, everyone talks about how cool Hathi Ram Choudhary’s wife Renu (Gul Panag) is when she slaps him. It was unexpected and so was his reaction. He knows it’s an answer to how he used his hand across her face before and wisely, does not do anything. His frustration is felt by the rickshaw puller: Khana kha ke jaayega ke?
Hathi Ram is played brilliantly by Jaideep Ahlawat (and his gentle paunch that was absent in Raazi) who brings out his everyday frustrations both in his language with the people he interrogates and with gentle defeated body language with his family. His relationship with his wife is extraordinary. She calls him out every time he oversteps his boundaries by telling him, ‘You are behaving like your dad’ and accepts his sarcasm when she allows her brother to talk her into buying ridiculous products. She knows when he’s lying to her, and yet worries for his safety because she knows he will go all out after criminals fists swinging. You see Hathi Ram as a policeman who has to salute his station chief who is really inferior to him and knows if Ansari passes his Civil Services exam he will then have to salute Ansari as well. The case that has been handed to him has earned him a suspension for no fault of his own. And his son won’t respect him. And yet he is a hero of this show because we see little bits of us in him. And we want him to pursue the baddies even when he’s suspended, we like his hunches and we like his relationship with the language. Never have I ever cheered a ‘Thulla’ (the Delhi equivalent of a Bombay ‘Pandu’ or policeman) ever, until I heard the thug threaten Hathi Ram, saying, 'I will get you suspended in two minutes!’ and without breaking his pace and dragging his stunned son, Hathi Ram replies, ‘Tera Phoopa pehle se hee suspend hai B***G***!’
I know more than one person who is struggling to understand their kids. Just as Hathi Ram does. He has curried favour to get his son admitted to a good school, but the kid doesn’t fit in and hates his father for that. The differences between father and son are handled so wonderfully in this show, you will be forced to look at your own kids. One day you have the answers to all their incessant questions, and the next day they’re finding answers on the Net and have heroes like Raju Bhaiyya who has a shiny gun...Hathi Ram needs to decimate his kid’s false heroes and become one again. Was so glad to see the lad casually give his dad the undies and even accepts ice cream. But only after his dad shows him that Raju Bhaiyya and the other guys were not really the good guys.
Speaking of good guys, Hathi Ram and Ansari have such a good relationship. There’s no obvious ‘Yeh Dosti’ songs playing in the background, but just quiet respect. When you see other cops gossiping about Ansari’s religion, Hathi Ram literally steps between them and asks Ansari to come along. Ansari goes out of his way to get the file for a suspended Hathi Ram and even sees him off at the bus station.
When Hathi Ram reaches Chitrakoot, we are plunged headlong into looking at other relationships. I am scared of Masterji (although we never really see him) who wields so much power over Hathoda Tyagi. Power that translates into loyalty that scares politicians like Gwala Gujjar. Hathoda Tyagi’s backstory was a bit much for me, but who am I to say rape and revenge do not exist in the badlands of our country? Abhishek Bannerji plays Vishal Tyagi who becomes Hathoda Tyagi and I hope you watched the movie Stree already, or you will expect him to go berserk in the film as well.
Jagjeet Sandhu who usually plays happy guys in Punjabi films, plays the demented Tope Singh here. His obsession with Chanda is explained off and you don’t quite get why he would seek Chanda all the way to Kolkata. His backstory is predictable anger over caste and rape but I so wanted to know why he was crazy for Chanda. She must've shown him some sort of kindness or made him forget his past with lust…
The cruellest story is that of Cheeni or Mary Lyngdoh. Mairembam Ronaldo Singh’s grief and rage spill out onto the screen and you realise that the violence with Cheeni is more real than what happened with either Hathoda or Tope Singh. Mary’s fragile, vulnerable life as explained by Kaaliya (played by Amarjeet Singh) is a story of a relationship that seems doomed from the start. Mary is saving money for a dream we know will never come true. She will never leave Paatal Lok.
Annoying home truths come to us in the form of the relationship between the big town big media reporter and the local hack Amitosh Tripathi (played by Shreedhar Dubey). Big town reporter uses the information Amitosh has and wheedles it out without a thought of putting his life in jeopardy. We have also seen how newsmen like Sanjeev Mehra (Neeraj Kabi) use their power and position to seduce starry-eyed juniors and yet hold on to their awkward relationship with their wives to keep their public face. This show makes no pretence to offer any respect to the celebrity journalist showing him to be shallow and selfish, using every possible opportunity to use information to glorify himself at the same time carelessly put others in harm’s way. His public face and his private face are very well written, and his redemption comes by way of his ignored wife who finds an outlet to her love in Shabitri the street dog.
I loved the connect between what Masterji observed about Hathoda Tyagi and in turn what Hathoda sees in Sanjeev’s wife. People do say it’s very John Wick like, but they forget Hathoda meditated in a Shiva temple, the Lord of all animals. Now that we are stepping into the realm of religion and mythology, let me sidetrack to the most manipulative of all backstories in the show. Kabir’s story. Yes, it is tragic and realistic and I am as ashamed of the awful way the Muslims are treated in our country, but it is as obvious as Bollywood showing Muslim characters in movies living in a house that must have a green wall. When it comes to connecting Hindu myth to the characters, the story sort of hets too clever for its own boots. When Hathi Ram jumps into the mela, there’s a flashback of a fortune teller talking about a baby being born with the same stars as a mythical king Hiranyakashipu which deals with Vishnu (Tyagis are mostly Vaishnavites). You know the baby will grow up to be Hathoda but this story is related to Vishnu and Vishal Tyagi prays to Shiva when he’s with Masterji and Masterji’s Rudraksh is like a sign for Hathoda Tyagi… Hathi Ram lumbers through the beginning of the story at a pace that suits his name and as he realises that he’s being set up to fail, the show picks up pace too. We have made a connection with not just Hathi Ram but with Renu and Ansari and even with Cheeni. You wish there was a second season of Paatal Lok with Hathi Ram storming into Swarg Lok again with a, ‘Dilli pulis hoon B***C***’!
Manisha Lakhe is a poet, film critic, traveller, founder of Caferati — an online writer’s forum, hosts Mumbai’s oldest open mic, and teaches advertising, films and communication.
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