Mountains have been made of heaps of cow dung, precious ink and newsprint in an attempt to give an ordinary blood-and-gore gang war movie into a cult classic. And that is probably how it will go down in movie lore for a while, at least. What distinguishes Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur from those patronised by Ram Gopal Varma who had, seemingly, become the entry door for the former’s entry into the rough terrain of Bollywood. Kashyap had co-authored Satya (98) with Saurab Shukla. This Ram Gopal Varma-directed movie, which told the story of a young immigrant who comes to Mumbai seeking fortune, but instead gets sucked into the labyrinth of the underworld, turned out to be a surprise hit. It was a cut-and-dry screenplay that made a fortune at the box office. Picking up the threads, he next wrote and directed Paanch (03), ostensibly based on the late 1970s Abhyankar Joshi Pune serial murder case that was repeatedly denied censor certificate, reportedly for objections to glorification of violence; depicting modus operandi in a crime (killing of a police officer); excessive use of drugs; grey characterisation and unchecked use of double-entendre replete with abusive language in Bhojpuri, often with sexual undertones.
Next in line was Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Blasts, in 1993 (04). It deployed the docu-drama format. Now almost a decade later Kashyap cleverly decided to recast the urbane formula, providing it with a definite setting (mining township on the outskirts of Dhanbad in Jharkhand), using the docu-drama device again to show passage of time, specific historical development process. It surely is a valiant move that might turn out to be the beginning of the mythical churning, and change the very direction of mainstream Hindi cinema towards more insightful arena. On the surfeit it has a mouthful of ingredients, much more lush as well as nauseating, that prompted the censors to deny Paanch a certificate. In a scenario where the police-criminal-politician nexus does not even make a headline anymore, a more liberal outlook has worked with Gangs of Wasseypur—despite a weak opening, but an oblong media support—it has turned out to be a hit, raking in Rs 25-crore in the first two weeks of its run.
The coal mines and the mafia that controlled it in the early 1940s when the British still ruled the land are essentially a take-off point for the meandering screenplay—which conveniently turns into documentary format—is otherwise nothing but an endless depiction of ruthless murder and mayhem between warring clans in a kind of no-man’s land on the outskirts of Dhanbad which was part of the Bengal territory. That the director means business, determined not to permit even the loo-time pause, and get into the thick of murderous things with subplots introduced at convenience. Much in the first half of the narrative, which begins with spraying of bullets and bombs at a property ostensibly belonging to another don, to wipe it out? At the centre of the conflict are the Qureshis and the Khans—the bandits and the butchers—end up with the deliberate killing an ambitious accomplice.
Enters Shahid Khan, operating from a piece of land known as Wasseypur where even the law-makers feared to tread while the bandit looted the trains. When rivalry between two sets of bandits turns somewhat abnormal, he moves to the neighbourhood town and starts working in a coalmine run by the local leader, Rajadhir Singh and soon becomes his trusted trouble-shooter. One night when Shahid is confiding in a friend his ambition to be his own boss Rajadhir’s goons wipe out the entire family though his son, Sardar gets saved courtesy one of the benevolent mercenaries. Documentary format takes over as the narrative moves in time and space together with minor subplots.
Moving into the 1970s. Reeking with a desire for revenge, Sardar Khan is becoming a power centre in his own, with characters in-and-out of the narrative almost at will. More meat is minced, innocents butchered, more animals and men slaughtered, women waylaid shamelessly, foul language thrown up in the air leaving one gasping for a whiff of fresh air. What has been seen in Gangs of Wasseypur is only a part, and not the whole. At the end, a betrayed Sardar Khan meets his end when bullets are sprayed at him as mercilessly as he had done with the butcher-knife to others. But we are not finished. It is not the end, but only an interval because the guns do not get silenced at the end of 160 minutes. It is now time for Faisal, the cool second son of Sardar to pick up the reigns and become the power centre. He will carry the legacy. The Wasseypur skyline changes rapidly as the narrative gets more contemporary times—more colourful, more violent, and yet more….
The country has been taken over by the mafia dons of different hues, shapes and colours with the nexus exposed to the hilt. For every land mafia there is a sand mafia, every Spectrum scam vying for national honours with housing societies scams. When every aspect of public life is a scandal involving all the four estates, it is time to rethink. And at a time when the far-reaching electronic media has joined the bandwagon of nepotism, some turning out to be madams and pimps between industrial houses and law-makers, it is time for mainstream cinema to change course and awaken the conscience of the ordinary citizen using the reach and power of cinema.
No doubt, disturbing cinema but Gangs of Wasseypur is an over-crowded, over-done, somewhat incongruous screenplay: the very opening sequence betrays the flow of narrative, two warring lawless Muslim communities, and the wedge that is created by a politically-ambitious wicked trader, the same old divide-and-rule game plan. It “leaves you drained even as you get drowned in it” (blood and gore) wrote a colleague. It is a gripping narrative, suave, stylised, technically perfect, the overall impact wouldn’t really have been diminished if the expletives had been somewhat toned down, and not deliberately explicit. A lot of folk element and total local lingo sets it apart from other films of the genre, tried by many other contemporary film-makers—Vishal Bhardwaj for instance—in Maqbool, Omkara and Kaminey but then there was a deliberate, conscious effort to douse it as well. In this case, Kashyap decided to go the extra mile. And since box office results indicate a positive response, it would be interesting to see how many others take the cue. After all, Bollywood does suffer from the herd mentality.
It has worked for Kashyap who is reported to have said: “I just wanted to be honest. I came across a story that captivated me and I wanted to be true to it.”
By Suresh Kohli
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