I’d be surprised if showrunner Sameer Saxena and directors Biswapati Sarkar and Amit Golani didn’t come up with the idea of Kaala Paani (Netflix) during the lockdown imposed because of COVID-19. An uncertain time when many of us were sitting at home, watching films like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011), I’m assuming most filmmakers and writers saw possibilities for a pandemic thriller, especially with everything going on around us. But it’s one thing to brainstorm these ideas, and quite another to execute them. Kaala Paani is confidently mounted, and showcases an attribute that almost immediately makes one want to root for it: an ambitious scope of inquiry.
Set in December 2027 – as if to suggest a time in the near future, when human beings have forgotten about the horrors of COVID-19 and have become predictably lax about social distancing – the show begins in Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The show’s name is derived from the local name for the Cellular Jail in the capital city that was built by the British for the most ‘notorious’ revolutionaries, chosen to serve particularly oppressive life sentences. The islands are pegged as a prison, surrounded by a wall no one could possibly scale – the endless sea.
The first episode does well to introduce the main players of the show and set up the central conflict. Dr Soudamini Singh (Mona Singh, as assured as ever) has discovered an increasing number of patients with black spots on the nape of their necks. All patients seem to exhibit similar symptoms: fever and hiccups, followed by death a few hours later. When Dr Singh brings this to the attention of her colleagues, they accuse her of being an alarmist. The island is going to be hosting a festival for tourists called Swaraj Mahotsav (eerily sounds like Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav) – and as one might be able to predict in such a show, there’s an outbreak on the island with the disease found to be spreading through a water pipeline, emerging from a lake.
Much like Contagion (2011) – Soderbergh’s sharp and meticulous chronicling of an epidemic, right in the aftermath of the H1N1 breakout in 2009 – even Kaala Paani’s characters come from all walks of life. This includes doctors, nurses, local administrators, politicians, cops, mainland tourists, local tour guides, ecological activists, and indigenous communities. It results in at least half a dozen subplots, covering the beats of a survival drama – a puppy romance, a couple of tracks around generational trauma being passed down – all this, apart from the main conflict of these characters getting through a widespread disease in the time of lockdown, where the administration is controlling the information to prevent public hysteria or simply to manipulate the public view of how is handling the crisis.
It’s a pleasure to see director Ashutosh Gowariker come back to acting after nearly two decades, as Lieutenant Governor (LG) Zibran Qadri – an admiral of the Indian Navy-turned-politician. As LG Qadri, Gowariker is precise – not giving his character unnecessary affectations and keeping it as uncluttered as possible – even though he seems conscious of the camera through a major chunk of his performance. Sukant Goel, as a slippery tour guide Chiranjeevi, is as potent as ever. His Tamil-inflected Hindi is consistent, and he gets one of the more interesting arcs in the show. Vikas Kumar – playing Santosh Savle, a working-class man from Bokaro visiting the island with his family, is another memorable character. Kumar has a disarming sincerity with the way he uses his big eyes, coarse body language and nothing-held-back approach during the big emotional scenes. Amey Wagh has fun playing Ketan Kamat – a corrupt cop, who acts as a liaison with the big corporate presence on the island, a company called Atom which wants to ‘develop’ the islands by resettling the indigenous tribes. Kaala Paani is well-acted for a large part.
However, a few things stick out. Things that feel like writers’ contrivance to take the show in a particular direction, rather than allowing it to take its own course. For example, in an early scene when a doctor argues with LG Qadri that the public should be informed about the disease amongst them, and therefore the need for social distancing and isolation – neither of them debates the panic that could be caused by the announcement. Qadri wants to control the information to his own advantage, while the doctor recklessly informs the media about the outbreak, without fully weighing the consequences of her actions. Similarly, Dr Soudamini Singh’s initiative in the first episode to track down her patients, putting herself in harm’s way for it, feels rushed for the sake of a cliffhanger at the end of the first episode. Several characters ‘coincidentally’ identify patterns of a flower or a water bottle to make the tracks intersect during key moments.
Also, there are too many tears. Kaala Paani – like most mainstream projects – seems to have a serious problem with showing restraint and does not leave anything unsaid. Themes about the ‘man vs nature’ conflict are verbalised through awkward lines like “nature always finds a way”. The show’s interest in human nature is clunkily explained through the frog and scorpion fable. One of the show’s core conflicts – whether one human life is more valuable than the other, and how one ascribes ‘value’ to life is spoon-fed in the second episode, where LG Qadri explains the ‘trolley problem’ with visual cues at a seminar.
A certain kind of anxiety seems to underline these choices – that ‘the audience will not get it’ unless it’s all spelt out. It’s almost like the show doesn’t trust its merits enough to move the audience and thus injects decent scenes with exposition or melodrama. The show, which could have been leaner, also employs flashbacks that don’t necessarily work. Like the corrupt cop’s telling of how he got his ‘punishment posting’ in Andaman, or the trauma of a nurse played by Ayushi Sharma, which caused her to give up nursing. These flashbacks don’t add much to the characters, and are in retrospect wasteful, digressing from the show’s main narrative.
Sameer Saxena’s show could have been more adventurous with its treatment of indigenous tribal characters – who are sadly, even here, shown to be mute, noble spectators. They don’t have much personality, apart from being respectful of nature, or being flogged by the city folk to show their ‘oppression’. At the same time, one of the show’s biggest strengths is also that it stresses on the cruelty of ‘civilised society’. At one point, a few men in a room don’t hesitate even once while discussing the possibility that they may have to wipe out the entire indigenous tribe for their own survival. It’s a stunningly cruel moment delivered minus a dramatic background score, making it that much more chilling. Genocide, as an order of business, to be ticked off during a meeting among the powerful – one assumes this is how it happens across the world. There’s also a superbly anti-climactic reveal about a secret project – designed in precisely that manner – to show capitalism’s reckless ways.
The track featuring Vikas Kumar is the only arc that feels like it’s been allowed time to breathe. The climactic decision, and the horrific catharsis accompanying it, feel earned. The show’s commentary on ‘human desperation’ isn’t underlined, making it all the more effective. Kaala Paani is a competently made pandemic thriller, one that doesn’t show enough faith in itself in key moments. Hopefully, there will be fewer tears in the second season.