How does a Bengali bhodrolok define a chhotolok? A person, who doesn’t fall into his upper-caste, middle-class mindset and is seen in professions that are considered ‘lowly’ by society. They are not supposed to sit on a sofa in the drawing room and are expected to sit on the floor while having their food. Even if they land a government job, people mutter that they have got the job through the ‘quota system’.
Indranil Roychowchudury’s new Bengali series, Chhotolok (on Zee5), might seem to be dealing with this issue, but actually, it’s more about the bhodroloks, and how they actually do not remain a refined Bengali, when it comes to the question of protecting their honour. They can stoop so low that they themselves transform into real chhotoloks.
That way, this series can be called an introspection of sorts, though it might come across as a slow-burner murder mystery. Those who know Kobi, as Indranil is known among his peers, the series is a marked departure from what he has done so far as a director. Not only that... he proves a point too. That many directors in Bengal are criminally underrated.
Upper-caste Hindu Bengali intelligentsia has all the prominence in the political and economic power structure in the state. It’s also expected that the main audience of Bengali cinema and web series would also comprise this class. Indranil’s nine-part series never forgets about that. In his storytelling, more time is allotted to what this class of Bengalis actually does and seriously poses a question. This question is very subtly put and never becomes too pronounced. The question lingers even after the series ends and we are bound to do some soul-searching.
One of the best things about this web series is that it’s extremely well-written. It’s not a thriller, mind you, rather it’s a murder mystery that takes its own sweet time to reveal the characters. The time goes between the present and past very deftly, and never do the episodes lose their grip on the storyline. Certain clues are deliberately left behind for the audience to identify the killer and even if halfway through the series intelligent audience may understand who the killer is, they are bound to watch it till the end.
The episodes are fast-paced, and layers and characters are added at each turn of the story. It’s not for people who want to binge on episodes, yet you’ll be glued to your screen thinking about what will happen next. The end episode will leave a bitter-sweet taste in your mouth and you might even think that this is something that you have probably not seen in Bengali cinema and series.
Since it’s a murder mystery, revealing the storyline would be a crime. This much is sufficient to say that the characters that we see here are what we are and what we see in television news and in the Bengali newspapers. It’s about political leaders, the Bengali middle class, wannabe models, and of course, a lady police officer, who refuses to be corrupt. And, of course, about those socially marginalised people, often referred to as chhotoloks.
We are in awe of the lady sub-inspector of the local police station, who is not from the Bengali Brahmin-Baidya-Kayasthya clan and yet who takes up the case as the investigative officer and opens up the cracks in the upper echelons of the society. Her assistant is a junior officer, who happens to be a Bengali Muslim, and this, I would say is a statement of sorts against what has been going on in Bengali society in general and cinemas, serials, and web series in particular. Even during the talks of a matrimonial alliance, the question of caste arises.
“You are a Das, which caste are you from?”
The answer comes: “I am not the upper-caste Das.”
The liberal face of the so-called Bengali intelligentsia is laid bare. You are gently reminded of the matrimonial ads in the newspapers where grooms and brides are advertised on the basis of caste, after one hundred and fifty years of the great Bengali renaissance.
Another reason most viewers would like this web series is because it is a respite from countless Byomkesh and Feluda stories that are streaming all over. It’s fresh and the protagonist, an unassuming ordinary-looking lady police officer springs up a huge surprise. Daminee Benny Basu, who essays this role is known to be a great actor in the industry, yet she has always been neglected on screen. The last time I saw her in an important role on screen was probably long ago, in Gaaner Opare. In this web series, she is brilliant, to say the least, and quite frankly, after the script part, she’s probably the “showrunner”.
But this series can’t be dubbed as a one-person show resting on the performance of one Daminee. The casting is meticulously designed and each of them delivers. Indrani Haldar, Priyanka Sarkar, and Gaurav Chakrabarty have their own star value, though it has been proven so many times in many Hindi web series that stars are no longer needed to pull off a story if the story is good enough. They have done their job efficiently here, though I might like to add here that I was somehow expecting more from Priyanka, knowing how brilliant she is as an actor. She chose to act in an undertone, and except for the last scene where she was brilliant, some more surprise elements could have been added to her acting graph. Both the Ushashis — Chakraborty and Ray — have done well.
Besides Daminee, the biggest surprise to me was the director Joydeep Mukherjee playing the role of the politician’s husband. I never knew about his acting prowess and man, he has done a fantastic job. He definitely deserves a special mention here.
However, certain scenes could have been handled better than how they have been shown here. The scene where the escort girl played by Ushasi Ray treats her client looks like a cliched scene from a Hindi movie of the Seventies. This scene doesn’t quite gel with the rest of the stylisation of the modern-day series.
Also, the motive of the murder is not made clear in the end. If a low-caste person is to punish a Bengali bhodrolok by taking revenge will they kill a girl belonging to their own fraternity? Probably not. The logic that “She was driving at 200 kilometers per hour speed and she would have died sooner or later” doesn’t seem very logical to me. But, these small flaws are amply made up with the final episode and the subtle cinematic treatment that sums up the crime scenes that we have seen in the series.
Chhotolok is completely a new genre of web series not seen before in Bengal. Maybe, this is the turning point!
