Review: Paatal Lok (2020)

“Is it because while Tyagi and the other got banished to hell, you found your doorway to Heaven in this case?”

 So this thought also crossed in your mind that in which ‘lok’ you belong? And what is the basis of it? Money? States? Power? Religion? Cast? Community? Gender? Isn’t it partly we all reside in every ‘lok’? In a ‘lok,’ we are a victim; in other, we are a ‘culprit’! Amazon Prime’s new Indian web series ‘Paatal lok’ (Underworld) displays burning issues of the country unbiased and raw that its flames reach our hearts, which ignites a question in our minds that “do we really know our country from its core?”

Once Ram, with the help of Lakshman tried to find and kill Rawan. But he found that the Rawan had many faces as corruption, exploitation, kidnapping, poverty, gender-cast-class-color discriminations, and many more. But he cannot fight against it as he is alone this time. This time his whole army is on the other side. (some of the stuff above is written in our scriptures, though I read it on WhatsApp!!)

The show studies the evolution of the character of inspector Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat), who has frustrated in life at every level. He has divided the world around him into three parts, but soon he falls into a ‘chakrvyuh’ which moves from culprit becoming victim, victim becoming culprit. We see India through the prejudiced lens of Hathiram, but eventually, we both change our perception about truth, as sometimes what we know may not be the truth, not at all.

The whole system of all three worlds reminds me of the movie 'Snowpiercer.' Here the entire train of the system is controlled by politicians. The brutality of the third episode, which has stunned its viewers, slightly reminded me of the movie ‘The Color Purple.’ The film has based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name written by Alice Walker and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Oprah Winfrey. It tells the story of an African American woman who is not only tortured as a ‘black’ by white people but also as a ‘woman’ by black men. The same condition is faced by ‘Dalit woman’ every day in India.

Very loosely, it also reminds me of the movie ‘Earth.’ It has based on the novel ‘Ice Candy Man’ by Bapsi Sidhwa, directed by Deepa Mehta, starring Amir Khan, it connects that there is no control of women of any class or cast over their lives and are treated merely as pawns in the power games.

Some people gave it two stars (really?) because it is very predictable for them! Agree. Inhumanity towards lower-caste, riots for religions, ill-treatment of women, valueless lives of poor…. How predictable a society we have. Yeah, please show something new, we are used to such stuff now, right?  Some other people are saying it is biased, isn’t the society too? Don't you live in this society?

So, who is going to cast the first stone?