<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2025/jan/Mayank-Shekhar-op_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="83" />There is a scene in Prime Video&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/web-series/article/paatal-lok-2-actress-tilotama-shome-character-amazon-prime-video-23469026" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">killer Paatal Lok 2</a> where, shortly after murder of a bigwig in New Delhi&rsquo;s Nagaland Sadan/House, a young doctor stares at the body in the morgue.&nbsp;
She tells her senior, maybe, this could be death executed to send a message.
In the same way that in the 1960s, there used to be headhunting tribes in <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/web-series/article/paatal-lok-2-sudip-sharma-filmmakers-tiktokers-are-the-same-today-23467943" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Nagaland</a>. She saw this in a Nat Geo documentary. Although unsaid, this refers to the Konyak tribe. Usually, one comes across homages/tributes in shows/movies we like, and turn to them after.&nbsp;
I had to ask Paatal Lok creator, Sudip Sharma, hence, if there is such a National Geographic documentary! I did discover a three-minute Nat Geo clip online on how American Christian missionaries sort of helped put an end to the heinous, human headhunting practice in Nagaland.
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2025/jan/Sudip-Sharma_e.jpg" alt="Sudip Sharma, the creator of the series" width="1280" height="720" /> Sudip Sharma, the creator of the series
Sudip says, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen a lot of documentaries [on headhunting Konyaks]. But Nat Geo [specifically]? It just felt cool to say it!&rdquo;&nbsp;
It helps that Sudip is originally from the <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/web-series/article/paatal-lok-season-2-first-glimpse-jaideep-ahlawat-amazon-prime-video-23447926" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">North East</a>, namely Guwahati, Assam. His father moved in the early &rsquo;70s, and he studied there until Std X. &ldquo;We were outsiders,&rdquo; he says. Which is an odd thing to say, since he was born in Assam!&nbsp;
I wonder if that scene in Paatal Lok 2&mdash;where a Marwari businessman, Bajoria, terms himself an &ldquo;outsider&rdquo;, while he was born in Nagaland too&mdash;is somewhat inspired by his own life.&nbsp;
Sudip says, &ldquo;That character comes from my childhood best friend&rsquo;s father, who was gunned down [by rebels]. &nbsp;It was a visceral experience for me. This is &rsquo;80s-&rsquo;90s Assam; ULFA at its peak, insider-outsider conflict, etc. Things were really bad then. I&rsquo;ve seen those [political] undercurrents, up-close.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Unlike its prequel, that was set in <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/web-series/article/abhishek-banerjee-contributed-as-a-writer-for-two-episodes-of-paatal-lok-2-23466314" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Delhi&rsquo;s</a> lower-deck Jamnapaar area/thana, the eight-part Paatal Lok 2 is a political drama predominantly set/shot in Nagaland. Which, as Sudip puts it, has no TV/theatre/film industry, let alone production infrastructure.&nbsp;
The &ldquo;sleepless nights&rdquo; for Sudip began with hiring actors itself, wherein casting-agent Nikita Grover spent months auditioning in Nagaland: &ldquo;She&rsquo;d become a local, eventually. You can&rsquo;t find actors; you have to create them, from history professor, rappers, musicians, grocery shop-owners,&rdquo; Sudip recalls.&nbsp;
The sequel took six years to go from script to screen. In the interim, Sudip delivered an equally knock-out, Kohrra (2023), as authentically placed in Punjab, starring the gentle giant Suvinder Vikki (with Barun Sobti). The second season of which is currently underway.&nbsp;
Besides fine locals, my favourite piece of casting in Paatal Lok 2 has to be Assam&rsquo;s best-known filmmaker, Jahnu Barua, debuting as Uncle Ken&mdash;sparring, on occasion, with director-actor Nagesh Kukunoor onscreen! That was, apparently, the show&rsquo;s director-cinematographer Avinash Arun Dhaware&rsquo;s idea.&nbsp;
Paatal Lok 2, as a series, is suitably complex, sharply structured. It&rsquo;s immaterial, if you&rsquo;re always joining every dot among several strands in the screenplay, that&rsquo;s building plot over plot. Good enough, if you&rsquo;re engaged, throughout. As you are.
And that&rsquo;s because each episode, with a beginning, middle, end, feels like a complete story&mdash;over and above the running narrative arc of the wider series/season.
I suspect that&rsquo;s what separates web-series from films, that are far more focussed&mdash;in terms of central plot; chiefly concentrating on striking moments.&nbsp;
Also, why, I guess, we remember scene after scene from memorable movies. It&rsquo;s inevitably the characters that leave an indelible impact from a show.&nbsp;
In the middle of this, of course, is the haggard, rugged Haryanvi, Inspector Hathi Ram Chaudhary, &ldquo;permanent nivasi/resident of paatal lok (netherworld),&rdquo; blessed with mettle and an elephantine memory.&nbsp;
As in, the towering, deeply internalised, Jaideep Ahlawat, strongly shouldering an entire season. His polar-opposite, adorably quiet/genteel buddy-cop, Imran Ansari (Ishwak Singh), joins in as well.&nbsp;
This is still a slightly different Hathi Ram, though, if you notice. Sudip points out, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s more at peace. Maturity does that to you, given all that you&rsquo;ve been through before. The world is what it is. We needed the character to grow. In the first Paatal Lok, Hathi Ram, like me, came from an angry space.&rdquo;
That Paatal Lok was based on the book, The Story of My Assassins, by former journalist, rape-accused, Tarun Tejpal. And this was my prime issue with the series. While the source was obvious/well-known, at no point (in the opening/closing) was the author credited for that season.&nbsp;
I suppose the producers/streamer feared getting &lsquo;cancelled&rsquo;, in woke-speak, if they were found to be platforming a rape-accused?&nbsp;
To usurp credit thus is not the same as separating the art from the artiste; no matter where you stand on that debate. Why borrow someone&rsquo;s art, at all, since you find the artiste deplorable?
Sudip, who, I&rsquo;m pretty sure, had little/nothing to do with the credit call, on his part, clarifies, &ldquo;I owe a huge debt to The Story of My Assassins. There would&rsquo;ve been no show, if there wasn&rsquo;t the book.&rdquo;
As for Paatal Lok 3, he says, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s still a lot of Hathi Ram left in me. Many variables have to fall in place, though.&rdquo;&nbsp;
If he takes another half a decade, it would still be worth the wait. As Paatal Lok 2 has turned out to be. Especially dropping at a time, when we&rsquo;d begun to believe in the &lsquo;curse of the (crappy) second season&rsquo;, for most shows, anyway.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to &nbsp;mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.
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How this Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) heartbreaker wholly defies the ‘curse of the (crappy) second season’!

Ploughing deeper into Paatal Lok

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Ploughing deeper into Paatal Lok

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