The streaming space is full of police procedurals, and some also weave in social issues, like the new show Kaalkoot (on JioCinema). Directed by Sumit Saxena and starring current OTT darling Vijay Varma, the eight-part series is set in Sirsa, in UP, a hellhole of a town deceptively ordinary and placid on the surface.
The sniggering cops of the local station are being subjected to a sensitivity training workshop, necessary but also useless in an area so soaked in patriarchy, that rampant female foeticide causes no ripples. Nor do 28 reported cases of acid attacks on women, because it is usually deemed to be the victim’s fault.
Sub-inspector Ravi Shankar Tripathi (Varma), just three months into the job, constantly tongue-lashed by his immediate superior Jagdish Sahay (Gopal Datt), writes a letter of resignation. Deeming it too poetic to pass on, the genial constable Sattu Yadav (Yashpal Sharma) tells him to come up with a proper one, when an acid-attack falls into his hands.
Kaalkoot unfolds from the point of view of the surprisingly naïve Ravi Shankar, who is nagged nonstop by his mother (Seema Biswas) to get married. She keeps calling him at work and sending him photos, making her an even more irritatingly ‘filmi’ mother than normal. Ravi has been influenced by the anti-establishment poetry of his recently deceased father, who is a town celebrity; he is also bitterly affected by the marriage of his sister, forced to wed her molester to escape vicious gossip.
The latest acid-attack victim is Parul (Shweta Tripathi), who is harshly judged as a prostitute because there was a bottle of booze in her bag, and her photo on a sex website. But, her friends say, she is “not that type of girl,” but if she were, the cops wouldn’t even bother about her pain and disfigurement. In Parul’s clearly unhappy household, her father hates his two daughters because of their gender, and pays more attention to his pet dog.
There are other incidents linked to the case that expose the region’s entrenched misogyny. Why the series is called Kaalkoot (poison) still comes as a shock. In the process of his obsessive investigation of Parul’s case, Ravi is sandbagged into getting engaged with Shivani (Suzanna Mukherjee), but also understanding his own strengths and weaknesses better. If he has to survive in the police force, he has to be the kind of cop who does not need sensitivity training, but also has to be outwardly macho in that environment.
Even though the show (created by Arunabh Kumar and Saxena) does not say anything new about Indian society, is presents protagonist who could bring about change if he is not corrupted or desensitized by the inhumanity around him. Vijay Varma, who has played some really despicable characters in web series, now plays an inherently good man, trying to fit into a system not built for compassion towards the weak. Seema Biswas’s fluttery portrayal of the mother strikes a false note, but the other supporting cast, Yashpal Sharma, Gopal Datt and Shweta Tripathi Sharma are excellent, so the show that could have been depressing is actually curiously uplifting.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
