Playing human Jenga in Jengaburu

In the sevenpart series The Jengaburu Curse just dropped on Sony LIV a stateappointed personal security officer PSO as they call it in Odisha tells a young girl whorsquos wondering if her abducted father has been fed well ldquoDonrsquot worry Orissa is blessed by Lord Jagannath Nobody sleeps hungry hererdquo Theyrsquore relishing dalma on their plates as the PSO talks This is ironicFor centuries Odisha has been known for its frickinrsquo famines What else Chiefly Kalahandi Syndrome Meaning poverty and malnutrition plus diseases from droughts in one particular district of the eastern Indian statemdashthatrsquos often eclipsed by more populous neighbours in particular Bihar later Jharkhand BengalNow 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 nameThe narrative likewise travels further across the statemdashBhubaneshwar Cuttack Nayapalli Raghurajpur KeonjharhelliplsquoWorldbuildingrsquo which is the spine of any seriesfilm becomes all the more authentic once the creator knows that world itself no Of course thatrsquos neither sufficient nor necessary conditionIt helps that Panda is arguably the bestknown 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 filmmakerThe young girl Priya Das Faria Abdulla in the series though while Oriya of tribal origin based in London has grown up in Delhi She canrsquot speak the local language Why has she been provided a PSO It turns out early enough that it could be for roundtheclock surveillance on her rather than protection per seWhatrsquos she doing in Odisha anyway Looking for her missing father who was a professor at JNU once and has been an activist sincemdashworking among tribals in the forests with locals for allies even a doctor Makarand Deshpande who selflessly practises in the region ldquoHe could be confrontational in his waysrdquo the daughter concedes The lsquoNaxalsrsquo have probably nabbed Professor DasBut whorsquos a Naxal really Thatrsquos also at the core of what The Jengaburu Curse mines for a storymdashquestioning such throwaway terms that could sometimes also serve private agendas to fix dissentersdogooders along the wayGod knows the first search results on Google will show up multiple options for professors doctors wellknown names like Saibaba Uikey Binayak Sen Kobad Gandhy etc linked to MaoismNaxalism as it were Goes without saying any ism at its extreme capitalism included thatrsquos at odds with humanism is downright dangerous regardlessCould the real activists simply be diagnosed with a condition that makes them believe they live for ldquosomething larger than themrdquo 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 henceAt any rate the show itself takes pains to point out that itrsquos much larger in scope than the characters in it All of it because therersquos evidently bauxiteminerals 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 poorThe 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 Vetrimaaranrsquos glorious Tamil pic Viduthalai 2023For potentially warring enemies at one end are Russiarsquos Wagnertype 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 Itrsquos quite unsettlingA corporate conspiracy of this scale naturally will wither without complicity of the state that holds monopoly over violence Costa Gavrasrsquo Z 1969mdash adapted as Shanghai 2012 by Dibakar Bannerjeemdashit can be argued is the fountainhead of all such stateconspiracy contentBut Pandarsquos story so intricately plotted by Mayank Tewari screenplaydialogues plays out like a proper thrillermdashThe Odisha File if you may Some secondrate performances apart itrsquos immaterial whether you understand all thatrsquos going onWay more essential that you believe it Thatrsquos what we mean by leap of faith or suspension of disbelief anywaymdashas the camera first pans to the Jengabaru mining office with clocks of London India and Pyongyang time on the wallAt the centre of the conspiracy is greedpower of course These are really humans destroying humans in the longshort run You can tell why nobody cares in general in life I donrsquot think the specie is capable of thinking beyond itself its own lifetime or its immediate progeny at the mostWhich also makes ldquoissuebasedrdquo content hard to sell isnrsquot it Throughout his career Panda has done precisely thatmdashmaking pointpurpose the centre of his picturersquos sell Whether I Am Kalam on child rights or Kadvi Hawa climate changeMost filmmakers attempt to conceal just that fearing lack of interest The Jengaburu Curse is apparently Indiarsquos first lsquoclifirsquo a science thriller in the context of climate change as it were Like the termEqually enjoyed the seriesMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper