There is a lot to like in Guns & Gulaabs, the latest outing of maverick men Raj & DK, who take the tried-and-tested (and quite frankly, done-to-death) template of gangsters running amuck in the Indian heartland and cheekily turn it on its head, giving us seven episodes tinged with grit and gore, but far more imbued with comedy, romance and sheer madness.
But as we have seen before, nothing is what it seems in the world of Raj & DK. Guns & Gulaabs is ample proof of that. The comedy is twisted, the characters even more so and the milieu — the show is set in the early ’90s — is one which not only evokes nostalgia but also tangibly contributes to the fabric of the story.
Like the use of the music of that decade. If the recent hit Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani turned predominantly to the ’60s for inspiration, Guns & Gulaabs relies on Bollywood songs of the 1990s. There is narcotics top cop Arjun Verma (a rock-solid Dulquer Salmaan), whose name not only sounds like an Amitabh Bachchan character from the Deewaar-Trishul era but whose elixir of life is Hindi film songs. Arjun, posted in the fictional town of Gulaabganj where opium harvesting and trade are being carried out in ways both legal and illegal, will not get out of his Maruti Gypsy — another relic of that era — till he has finished listening to the last beat of Jab koi baat bigad jaaye, even if a risky operation is afoot. Arjun — ‘The Family Man’ as he is described early on in an obvious hat tip to Raj & DK’s almost-cult series — is introduced via the Zamane Ko Dikhana Hain hit Hoga tumse pyaara kaun, the title of the film almost embodying his life philosophy.
At the other end of the spectrum, but very much part of the social fabric of Gulaabganj, is Tipu (Rajkummar Rao, riffing expertly on his comedic side), a mechanic-turned-unwilling killer, who wants to woo the love of his life with a love letter written in English. But Tipu’s knowledge of English is as good or bad as my grasp of Swahili, and so he enlists the help of a group of schoolboys who study in the only English-medium school in Gulaabganj. Laalkrishna aka Nannu, the one with the ‘talent’ to write letters of romance, can only do so when he has English songs playing in the background, with everything from Foreigner’s I’ve Been Waiting For A Girl Like You to the Bryan Adams hit (Everything I Do) I Do It For You providing inspiration for his words, with the finishing touch being a sprinkling of his favourite perfume Pink Mamba.
Quirk, as Raj & DK’s work has come to be defined, also extends to Jugnu aka Chhota Ganji (Adarsh Gourav handles a complex character with remarkable ease), the scion of the Ganji family, the undisputed traders of opium in the area, who has big shoes to fill when Sr Ganji (Satish Kaushik) meets with a freak accident (one that is again tinged with tongue-in-cheek dark humour).
Bringing up the rear, and one of the most interesting characters that the director duo have created since Go Goa Gone’s fake Russian mafioso Boris, played compellingly by Saif Ali Khan, is Chaar Cut Atmaram. The combination of a classic comic-book villain and an ode to the kitschy antagonists of ’90s masala Bollywood, Chaar Cut Atmaram — so named because just four gashes from his Rampuri chaaku is enough to mutilate his victims — is the antithesis of a typical evil-doer, giggling his way through the series, even as he emulates the walk and talk of Sanjay Dutt from Khalnayak. The fact that Atmaram is quite an urban legend in Gulaabganj — rumour is rife that he has more lives than a cat’s proverbial nine — makes him unique and magnetic, with Gulshan Devaiah bringing the appropriate dose of menace and mirth to the part.
The lives of all these characters — and that of many others in what is a strong ensemble cast — collide in moments of delicious lunacy in this wacky world where anything goes, and which the makers themselves, in an interview with t2, have described as their “free-for-all” genre. But Raj & DK know how and when to rein in the absurd and Guns & Gulaabs is, undoubtedly, a masterclass in controlled chaos from the storytellers who have built quite a reputation for meshing and mastering diverse genres.
There is many a memorable moment in Guns & Gulaabs — either comic or sinister and often both — which makes it a compelling watch. A hospital shootout carried out in complete darkness and with the energy of a Tom & Jerry chase is a standout as is that scene where Atmaram slices open a key character, with the strains of S.P. Balasubrahmanyam’s antithetic Aaja aaja give me a kiss playing out. Jugnu’s big reveal is a curveball that speaks of glorious, taut writing. It’s a world that Raj & DK, along with writer Suman Kumar, build with relish and while it may take one a few episodes to really get into the world of Guns & Gulaabs, the payoff — the last episode, an 82-minute edge-of-the-seat finale, is a deadly dose of unhinged madness, throwing open the possibility of another season, if not more — is very satisfying.
Priyanka Roy
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