DABBA CARTEL

                                                 ON NETFLIX

Top of Form

 

I must confess, I started watching  Dabba Cartel with a mix of curiosity and trepidation. The world of Mumbai's dabbawalas and tiffin delivery service are used to deliver drugs. If you have watched Breaking Bad, you will recognise the drug. Here it is called MDM and later in its green coloured version Mithai. (Remember the blue coloured Meth from Breaking Bad?)I found myself drawn into the complex web of characters and storylines. The show's leading old lady, mother in law Shiela(played with grand aplomb by an aged and sharp Shabana Azmi in a refreshingly different avtar), who has retired from a treacherous background, is forced to  reveal her true colours to protect her innocent daughter in law from her over ambitious son and the mess she gets into to earn lots of money to fund his dreams.

 

·         From unscrupulous pharma companies to blackmailing and terrorising drug peddlers and dealers, the show sheds light on the dark underbelly of Mumbai's prosperous exterior.

It is essentially a show of the 6 ladies tied down in a web of ego, greed power, ambition, duty and survival.

·          

·         It also highlights the ambitons of the kamwali bai, Mala,(played by an effervescent Nimisha Sajayan) taking on the black mailers and a dark world to meet her dreams of a high flying life for herself and her daughter. When her school going daughter says that the TV she bought was too big for their small room, she says she will take a bigger house.

·         Mother in law Sheila is street smart and fiercely protective. When a consignment of drugs are accidentally destroyed and the drug dealer demands that they sell more drugs to recover his loss, she admits there is no way out. It had to be done. At another point she admits to her daughter in law, adamant to stick to routine life, that she was not born for the chula chowka stuff.

The daughter in law is Raji Jagtap (played with sweet innocence by  Shalini Pandey) . At a crisis point when the consignment has to be stolen from her husband to save themselves, she defies her mother in law saying she would not steal.

The house broker Shahida (played a bubbly Anjali Anand)is your everyday greedy agent who has an attraction for the lady Police Officer Preeti looking for a big case to get her promotion(played with the daring eagerness of an young lady in search of her dreams by Sai Tamhankar).

Varuna (played by a dignified and sad looking Jyotika ) is the ignored and side tracked wife of Shankar Dasgupta(played by a sauve Jisshu Sengupta), the manipulative local boss of the unscrupulous pharma company.

The investigation into the pharma company which causes all this trouble is doggedly pursued even in the threat of suspension by Arun Pathak, a close to retirement Drug Safety Officer (played with a mostly poker face by  Gajraj Rao ) who has some  interesting interactions with the  young and daring lady police officer.

 

If I have any quibbles, it's that the pacing can be a bit uneven at times. Some episodes feel a bit slow, while others are breakneck in their intensity. But overall, "Dabba Cartel" is a gripping and intense watch that's hard to look away from.

 

In short, if you're a fan of gritty, intense drama, "Dabba Cartel" is a must-watch. Just be prepared for a wild ride.                                            .IMDB rating 7.1

    I reopen my blog after a rather long break. I start with my take on the OTT channels that are demanding our eyeballs  from all across the net.  I have named it WHATSONOTT after a popular app.

We start with a recent addition. The film Maidaan. Featuring one of the most visible faces on screen. Ajay Devgn. The story is from the history of Indian football from which we continue to learn nothing.  And casually forget the inspiring men who took India to the top of Asian Football where we could never reach again to this day.  In the face of staunch opposition. From some of us Indians only. We remember headlines from a foggy memory to say “yeah yeah. The 60s Asian Games Gold. But that was so long ago. Since then we are going down only.” But then we forget our country's history too! Big results are the outcome of long, hard efforts and a planned pursuit of the goal.

 

 

       The 1962 gold medal was made possible by the vision of one man and his dogged pursuit for more than a decade.  His toil, leadership, talent spotting ability and strategy building. And courage. Facing back biting, neglect insult and enmity that comes with it. He was Syed Abdul Rahim. Maidaan is his story.

 

I was in school in the 60s. Football dominated the Sports pages of vernacular dailies and radio commentaries. It was mostly local. Cricket came in the winter months only in its Test avatar. And when there was an international cricket tour of India. Heroes like Jaiseema, Patoudi, Farokh Engineer and Salim Durani were reserved for those times. The occasional Indian cricket wins were not sufficient to garner yearlong interest. 

    Quarter page photographs of Chuni Goswami, P K Banerjee, Balaram and Peter Thongoraj  in action, Bengali commentary of Ajayda and Kamalda telling us about a  thikana lekha pass (an accurate pass) just rocked. Brazil, Latin American football was read about. You read about Pele, Eusebio and Lev Yasin the Russian Goalkeeper. More enthusiastic classmates would speak of Czech and Hungarian football, Cruyiff and Puskas. But East Bengal Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting dominated our world of sports.

 

Chuni Goswami’s flamboyance was as famous as his swerving free kicks. We heard and saw Beckham bending them much much later. And this era is brought to life in Maidaan. The Raj Era buildings, trams trundling down the green maidan, the laid back life, children playing football in the mud, big black umbrellas and our childhood heroes winning on celluloid.

 

Football matches were brought alive by shots and sounds of a football landing in the mud so you would feel the splash, tearing the net with the power of a kick, bare feet with only anklets  struggling to stop foreign boots.

 

The ferocity of the matches confronts us. Even if we know the outcome, the grit of the players comes through. Chuni’s free kick swerving past the wall into the South Korean goal makes us yearn for an action replay from all different angles. And the one man behind it all, who had to convince everyone, even the Prime Minister, to send a football team to Jakarta with an assurance of a gold medal. He knew it was his swan song.

 

So it was for Indian football too!

 

Maidaan is playing on Prime video. Watch it. I felt the National flag going up and the national anthem playing.

 

Ek Chabi Anyo Gaan

Somehow I was always more fascinated by sound  rather than pictures. One reason maybe that a typical sound registered its association instantly and accurately each time. A picture did that too but it seemed slower and less accurate. With the gradual improvement in sound technology, the waves became live, each individual sound  registered separately. Also, in the home entertainment sector, all  the latest developments in sound technology came at an affordable cost, while the upscale home video came at a prohibitive high investment . True, the thumping bass ruled for a while, but sanity returned to delight listeners with true sound that immersed the listener.

Most of the songs in modern movies have become mood enhancers rather than story tellers. And can  add another dimension to  nicely crafted sequences from another movie. To me it adds visual pleasure to the song.

I have remixed a few songs and film sequences and found immense pleasure, both in matching them and viewing them. 

The Pakistani TV serial MAAT

The picture above is of Rinki Bhattacharya (Roy). She is the daughter of the famed Film Director, Bimal Roy and wife of another serious filmmaker Basu Bhattacharya. Some years back, she used to appear regularly on TV, mainly DD Kolkata/ National, to participate in discussions on  films and of course the creations of her father and hand her husband..

She is an ardent advocate of good cinema, mainstream or otherwise. And now, when excellent creations for the small screen have overtaken movies, their big brother, both in terms of quality and quantity, she has accepted them with open arms.

I came across her review of Zindagi Channel on Rediff and got hooked.

Some excerpts from her writings:

September 14, 2014 16:01 IST

The television shows aired on Zindagi channel are intelligently scripted and elegantly mounted, writes Rinki Roy Bhattacharya.

A chance remark about Zindagi channel’s women-sensitive content made me curious enough to switch it on. The channel airs Pakistani syndicated shows in India.

What I discovered were intense human dramas of love, betrayal, deception and exploitation, with a special emphasis on man-woman relationships.

Few other channels portray complex human drama with such undivided attention, especially in a society conflicted by political ideology.

The stories aired on Zindagi are intelligently scripted and elegantly mounted.

Pakistani cultural values are at play in these stories and yet they have a universal appeal. Human emotions are so alike in most cultures, that these stories could be staged anywhere from Lahore to London.

I stumbled on the channel at the precise point when the poignant Maat had reached its suspenseful second half, and have been a regular watcher since.

Zindagi’s realistic portrayal of Pakistani society does not shy away from showing its ugly underbelly.

The people we see are real, their aspirations and frustrations very convincing. This is one of its greatest triumphs.

Kahi Unkahi, for example, is preoccupied with a class-ridden society where the working class is treated with contempt bordering on inhumanity.

Zindagi Gulzar Hai is about campus life, student politics and the youthful romance between two students, who hate each other and then prove that opposites attract.

In Kaash Main Teri Beti Na Hoti, a nobleman hires the womb of a pretty but poor girl with the intention of discarding her once the progeny is born. It is a shrill melodrama, rather like our familiar telly dramas.

Zindagi has successfully seduced urban Indian viewers, especially those who can recall Dhoop Kinare and Tanhaiya from 30 years ago.

Indian viewers fell head over heels in love with the bubbly intern, Dr Zoya in Dhoop Kinare. Viewers held their breath as her romance with Dr Ansari progressed quietly in its old fashioned style through stolen glances and unspoken words. A dear friend recently confessed he is waiting to find a Dr Zoya! The compelling power of this medium cannot be ignored.The Zindagi channel also shows some fine telly films, such as Behadd, a deceptively simple love story.

The film explores a relevant universal concern -- the guilt single parents suffer in asserting their individual choice.

It revolves around an attractive widow, who is a working mother. Friends, including her boss, worry about the way she is raising her 15-year-old daughter Maha. If the mother is overprotective, the daughter is fiercely possessive.

The opening scene establishes Maha’s power over her mother. It is obvious that Maha resents sharing her mother. Maternal fragility and the overwhelming emotional demands of selfish adolescents are familiar issues in any contemporary urban society.

The Behadd subtext gently probes how younger men find older, mature women less challenging and thus extremely desirable.

The Zindagi channel also shows some fine telly films, such as Behadd, a deceptively simple love story.

The film explores a relevant universal concern -- the guilt single parents suffer in asserting their individual choice.

It revolves around an attractive widow, who is a working mother. Friends, including her boss, worry about the way she is raising her 15-year-old daughter Maha. If the mother is overprotective, the daughter is fiercely possessive.

The opening scene establishes Maha’s power over her mother. It is obvious that Maha resents sharing her mother. Maternal fragility and the overwhelming emotional demands of selfish adolescents are familiar issues in any contemporary urban society.

The Behadd subtext gently probes how younger men find older, mature women less challenging and thus extremely desirable.”

=============================================

.

And then I watched Maat. Saba Qamar, picture above, is the greedy and beautiful younger sister Saman. She wants the entire world for herself and is bold enough to lie, cheat or steal her way through life.

Eman( Aamina Sheikh) is the elder, homely, protective, caring. She ends up slaving for Saman. In return, Saman  hijacks her  savings for her wedding, her dresses and even the man she is engaged to, Faisal. And when she finds a richer alternative in Azhar, she switches sides with her sweet talk.

Adnan Siddiqui portrays Faisal perfectly as the simple man helplessly in love with a scheming woman. He tries in vain to please her and ends up being blamed by everyone. 

 










What leaves you always craving for the next episode is the swift movement of the plot and the intense acting. One side glance from Saba Qamar at Eman’s wedding dress reveals Saman’s greed. 

 Adnan Siddiqui’s  school boyish smile as he opens the door of his new car for Saman is a picture of Faisal’s  helpless surrender. Aamina Sheikh’s  moist eyes, as Saman leaves Faizal for Azhar and blames Eman ,  pleads to deaf ears for Eman’s innocence.