Boxing Day:
The killer instinct that was said to be lacking in Indian sportspersons, has in recent years, seen a dramatic rise. After the medal tally of a few boxers and wrestlers, Haryana has become the sports capital of India, with training academies mushrooming in every town. Shaktigarh is one such, where coaches dream of Olympic gold.
The Netflix series, titled Glory, is the story of Raghubir Singh (Suvinder Vicky), whose single-minded determination to train a boxer who could win an Olympic gold medal, has driven away his sons, Devinder (Divyenndu) and Ravinder (Pulkit Samrat).
They return to the town full of painful memories, when their sister Gudiya (Jannat Zubair Rehmani) lands up in hospital after a savage attack. She was about to elope with Raghubir’s star boxer Nihal (Yugam Sood). The attack ended in the death of Nihal and her in a coma.
Amidst the rampant patriarchy and Khap Panchayat rules of Haryana, Gudiya’s plight is pushed aside in the brothers’ quest for revenge. They start investigating when the cops fail to produce a suspect, and unravel the unsavoury mess of corruption and violence in the city. Who orchestrated the attack and why does not come as a surprise, but the cold-blooded calculation of the killer is still tragic and somewhat shocking, highlighting the secondary status of women in the state.
Directed by Karan Anshuman and Kanishk Varma, the show is a sports drama, murder mystery, dysfunctional family saga and social commentary all rolled into one. Maybe it tried to pack in too much and lost focus, but the show is still a reflection of how regressive India can be, even when women are moving forward. Male-dominated Punjab and Haryana are producing female wrestles and boxers—if they have to get ahead in the society that practices female foeticide and infanticide with impunity, they have to compete like men.
Boxing is a bloody, atavistic sport and it is not pleasant to watch the blood and bruises, so the show leans more on the drama behind the incident and the various tributaries that came together to pull off the attack. The performances are terrific—in spite of his Munna Tripathi character from Mirzapur, Divyenndu is better known for his comedies, but here he portrays Dev’s anguish and rage without holding anything back. Pulkit Samrat with his chiselled body and boyish face is an excellent foil for his volatile brother and abusive father.
The female characters like Sayani Gupta as a journalist and Kashmira Pardeshi as the wife of a cop with a secret life are given little to do, but serve as catalysts.
The dialogue in Haryanvi dialect, by Vaibhav Vishal is hard-hitting and pithy, which gives Glory a large part of its authenticity, the English subtitles cannot quite do it justice.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
