What happens in jail stays in jail

Have you watched the reality show Lock Upp where semiceleb types dressed in jail uniforms live like inmates in a fake prison competing for a grand prize and audiencersquos pleasure No I havenrsquot watched it eitherBut guess what I got invited to participate in its maiden season Must admit my eyes did light up a bit by the thought Mainly because it could make for an interesting journalistic piece on what happens to human behaviour when forced to live with strangers like rats in a labSomething Irsquove experimented once for 24 hours inside the Bigg Boss house The Lock Upp experience though would take about eight weeks of fake incarceration Which is too long a selfinflicted torture to enduremdashsimply to tell a taleIs that what serial entrepreneur Raj Kundra did with his stay in Mumbairsquos Arthur Road jail for 63 daysmdashshooting a semifictional film UT69 on it then starring himself Yes and noFirstly Kundra didnrsquot imprison himself by choice In the way say actor Shilpa Shetty did with the reality show Big Brother Shetty won that big British reality show Kundra and Shetty met thereafter Kundra was a LondonerHe helped her navigate the celebrityendorsement space to cash in on her British celebrity They subsequently fell in love and married Wersquove primarily known Kundra as Bollywood star Shettyrsquos husband sinceThat makes him a celebrity Which is both the best and worst place to be in the times of social media with its own judgemental lsquotall poppy syndromersquoWherein the public will offer you disproportionate attention and dopamine with shares and likes online for whatever you post But will equally pull you down so bad with their blind trolling if they donrsquot approve of you It can shatter your mental health if you arenrsquot Zen enoughKundra at some point became the lsquoMask Manrsquo in publicmdashcovering his face with helmet like Daft Punk before the paparazzi for the humiliation heaped upon him once he was arrested on charges of producing presumably consensual pornographic contentEven if he was actually involved and how are we know tomdashwhat he did is not even illegal for where he comes from Itrsquos like getting arrested for bootlegging in Bihar Tough luck Wrong state Thatrsquos allAlso booked for porn in a country where Sunny Leone is a superstar So tougher luck stillAs Kundra gets jailedmdashwhich is supposed to be the legal exception on such cases with bail anyway the normmdashhersquos stripped naked firstWhat follows is a life wholly dehumanisedmdashwith random belting for inmates threeminutesrsquo phonecall per week allowed with family bulletproof rotis for food 246 people packed into a room meant for 45 sleeping literally buttcheek by jowlhellipKundra has debuted as an actor playing himself with a bunch of debutants director production designer screenwriter cinematographer etc in the bittersweet picture UT69 for a prison diary UT as in undertrail Which is what he was like everybody else equally presumed guiltyNow Irsquove never met Kundra I do find him intriguing for the number of times he lands in random troublemdashshady business deal IPL spotfixing bitcoin something or the otherWhy did I watch UT69 all alone in an absolutely empty theatre Well somebody should And guess what I was surprisingly hooked Why againBecause it felt so innocentlyviscerally personalmdashrather than some kinda arthouse advocacy docket on human rights lensed from the distance of essential activismKundra got imprisoned in 2021 during the pandemic Which isnrsquot too far since the world had been placed under a forced lockdown What did we essentially hate about the lockdown That we couldnrsquot be around people The jail is the opposite scenarioAnd the film like the protagonist never once looking down at fellow travellers offers you enough empathy for the lives of others in the room Which is an apt way to deem anything as art anyway This isnrsquot selfcentred stuff Not voyeuristic eitherThere is still some joy little hope but mostly care for those who may barely get bail in a systemmdashso terribly loaded against the poormdashwhich takes such pride in the proverbial process being the hellish punishmentAt some point Kundra suggests everybody should go to jail to realise what itrsquos like ldquowhen yoursquore stripped of all money and statusrdquoThat explains his unpretentious movie Where you also learn how Kundrarsquos former businesspartner actor Sanjay Dutt once lodged in the same prison continues to pay cable TV and electricity bills for his former inmates stillWersquove reasons to believe Arthur Road is hardly the worst of Indian jails No civilised state must commit crimes especially on undertrials who they presume have committed crimes themselves Reality shows of course can put you through tests of extreme endurance You signed upSpeaking of which I did watch the opening episode of Lock Upp Only to check on their loosmdashheaving a sigh of intense relief for having said no to the silly show once I saw that desi style shithole in itItrsquos the one thing to fear about jails Watch the westernstyle commode full of fresh crap in UT69 Glad I didnrsquot puke in the theatremdashnot that anybody wouldrsquove known Mayank 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