Gripping 'Kaala Paani' tale

Nonika Singh

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Survival of the fittest… we all have grown up reading Darwin’s theory. In ‘Kaala Paani’, it gets an interesting twist. Set in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, once called Kaala Paani, we are jettisoned into the year 2027. The majestic islands are a thriving tourist hub preparing for a major cultural festival. All permissions are in order except for the signature of the Chief Medical Officer. In walks perky (and here pesky too) Mona Singh as Dr Soudamini Singh. She believes the simplest explanation is often the right one. Presto, she spots STD in a 67-year-old woman patient, an inmate of an old age home. But her reservations for not signing on the dotted line are not simple. The threat of a mysterious disease is lurking too close for comfort.

As she tries to find its spread and source, parallel stories take us to a tourist family of four, an unscrupulous taxi driver Chiranjeevi aka Chiru (Sukant Goel), his conscientious mother and Good Samaritan brother whose hearts beat for the Oraka tribals. Indeed, there can be no story of the islands without its indigenous tribal population, which we are told have been reduced to a marginal number of 400. By placing the story in 2027, the makers don’t have to bother as much about factual veracity. Even otherwise, the name of the tribe has no bearing on the native tribes of the island.

But the development versus environment premise is of grave concern, fair and well-intended. Then there is the plight of tribals, best summarised in a pithy oneliner: first they came for our forests, then our lands and now our bodies. With a battery of writers — Biswapati Sarkar, Nimisha Misra, Sandeep Saket and Amit Golani — powering the narrative, the survival thriller is also packed with some ecological and scientific facts. How a particular species of ants sacrifices so others of their ilk can survive. But with humans, the game could get reversed and by the end of the seven-episode series, we even get to hear a mini-sermon on how the race has evolved over centuries and evaded extinction.

Evolve or perish… the mantra has heft. Then there is the ‘flip the switch’ dilemma. Are five lives more precious than one and whose life carries greater value? The ambivalence of the dilemma carries weight. Indeed, Covid-19 taught us many lessons on how callous we humans can be. The series brings many of our recently lived experiences/fears to the fore. Only as it pans out like a thriller, it lags too.

Backstories are far too many and saddle the non-linear storyline going as far back as 1943. While individual stories add to the emotional core, these also rob it of momentum a thriller so demands. Especially when it bites into too many subjects like caste prejudices and the one involving nurse Jyotsna (Arushi Sharma) gets a trifle contrived. Noted filmmaker Ashutosh Gowariker as Zibran Qadri, the Lt Governor of the island, too, has a past tale to recount which underlines the large-heartedness of the tribals. But in the game of survival, there are no permanent friends or foes. So we see Santosh (Vikas Kumar) transform from a docile man into a ruthless survivor. The reverse is true for Chiranjeevi, whom tragedy changes for the better. Sukant Goel is terrific in this part and mirrors both the heartlessness and compassion of Chiru with equal ease. Vikas Kumar’s transition too is on point. The panic of the time and the situation he is caught in is wonderfully etched, even though his escape out of the pit is overdone. While we don’t get a complete sense of certain characters like ACP Ketan Kamat (Amey Wagh), the actor gets the wonkiness right. Gowariker is imposing and fits the bill even if he is not exactly a revelation. Mona Singh is impressive but it’s a pity that she bids goodbye too soon.

You can embrace the series if you are fed up of crime thrillers which are ruling the roost right now. ‘Kaala Paani’ does make for a refreshing break in the thriller genre. With three cinematographers, Ewan Mulligan, Barny Crocker and Dhananjay Navagrah, at work, the visuals are sumptuous and capture the vast expanse that the series straddles. Streaming on Netflix, the overcrowded landscape of people could have cut some baggage and hence slack, but deserves credit for not toeing the formulaic line. One grouse though, the scorpion and frog story did not call for a retelling as we have heard it before in more than one film.