Playing human Jenga in Jengaburu

A still from the seven-part series The Jengaburu Curse. Pic/Youtube

In the seven-part series, The Jengaburu Curse (just dropped on Sony LIV), a state-appointed, personal security officer (PSO, as they call it), in Odisha, tells a young girl, who's wondering if her abducted father has been fed well: "[Don't worry]. Orissa is blessed by Lord Jagannath. Nobody sleeps hungry here." They're relishing dalma on their plates, as the PSO talks. This is ironic.

For centuries, Odisha has been known for its frickin' famines! What else? Chiefly, Kalahandi Syndrome. Meaning, poverty and malnutrition, plus diseases, from droughts, in one particular district of the eastern Indian state - that's often eclipsed by more populous neighbours, in particular, Bihar (later, Jharkhand), Bengal.

Now, there are two ways to know a place. Either travel, or consume art intended as a lived experience. The latter being what director Nila Madhab Panda creates with the show, Jengaburu, about a fictional mining location in Odisha, by the same name.

The narrative, likewise, travels further across the state - Bhubaneshwar, Cuttack, Nayapalli, Raghurajpur, Keonjhar…

‘World-building', which is the spine of any series/film, becomes all the more authentic, once the creator knows that world itself, no? Of course, that's neither sufficient nor necessary condition.

It helps that Panda is arguably the best-known Oriya filmmaker, ever. Also, a rare one in the mainstream, with roots decidedly in its rural hamlets, where he grew up, before moving to Delhi as a documentary filmmaker.

The young girl, Priya Das (Faria Abdulla) in the series, though, while Oriya of tribal origin, based in London, has grown up in Delhi. She can't speak the local language. Why has she been provided a PSO? It turns out, early enough, that it could be for round-the-clock surveillance on her, rather than protection, per se.

What's she doing in Odisha, anyway? Looking for her missing father, who was a professor at JNU once, and has been an activist since - working among tribals in the forests, with locals for allies, even a doctor (Makarand Deshpande), who selflessly practises in the region. "He could be confrontational [in his ways]," the daughter concedes. The ‘Naxals' have probably nabbed Professor Das.

But who's a Naxal, really? That's also at the core of what The Jengaburu Curse mines, for a story - questioning such throwaway terms that could sometimes also serve private agendas, to fix dissenters/do-gooders, along the way.

God knows, the first search results on Google will show up multiple options for professors, doctors (well-known names like Saibaba, Uikey, Binayak Sen, Kobad Gandhy, etc), linked to Maoism/Naxalism, as it were. Goes without saying, any -ism, at its extreme, capitalism included, that's at odds with humanism, is downright dangerous, regardless.

Could the real activists simply be diagnosed with a condition that makes them believe they live for "something larger than them," as Prof Das, in this series, puts it? Fighting for society still, while the state that represents it, may not be on their side? An unequal battle, hence?

At any rate, the show itself takes pains to point out that it's much larger in scope than the characters in it. All of it because there's evidently bauxite/minerals inside the ground beneath their feet. Minerals being the reason why, in India, we call certain states (like Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand) rich, while its people, poor.

The vast excavations of Jengabaru are very different from the monstrous gold mines of the Kannada blockbuster, KGF (2018), obviously. The places, perhaps, in terms of people and police, closer to Vetrimaaran's glorious Tamil pic, Viduthalai (2023).

For potentially warring enemies, at one end are Russia's Wagner-type, private army, capable of rampage. At the other end are fellows from a tribe named Bondria (sounding like Bonda), still playing with a bow and poisoned arrow. This lot has been displaced for a project. Only the wrong set of people got resettled. It's quite unsettling.

A corporate conspiracy of this scale naturally will wither, without complicity of the state, that holds monopoly over violence. Costa Gavras' Z (1969) - adapted as Shanghai (2012) by Dibakar Bannerjee - it can be argued, is the fountainhead of all such state-conspiracy content.

But Panda's story, so intricately plotted by Mayank Tewari (screenplay-dialogues) plays out like a proper thriller - The Odisha File, if you may! Some second-rate performances apart, it's immaterial, whether you understand all that's going on.

Way more essential that you believe it. That's what we mean by leap of faith, or suspension of disbelief, anyway - as the camera first pans to the Jengabaru mining office, with clocks of London, India and Pyongyang time, on the wall.

At the centre of the conspiracy is greed/power, of course. These are really humans destroying humans, in the long/short run. You can tell why nobody cares, in general, in life. I don't think the specie is capable of thinking beyond itself, its own lifetime, or its immediate progeny, at the most.

Which also makes "issue-based" content hard to sell, isn't it? Throughout his career, Panda has done precisely that - making point/purpose, the centre of his picture's sell. Whether I Am Kalam (on child rights), or Kadvi Hawa (climate change).

Most filmmakers attempt to conceal just that, fearing lack of interest. The Jengaburu Curse is apparently India's first ‘cli-fi' (a science thriller, in the context of climate change, as it were). Like the term.
Equally enjoyed the series!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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