'Powder': Flower Power for Indian television

It took me the better part of eight years to fully understand what a’ paradigm’ was. I first encountered the word in ‘Jurassic Park’ (the novel) and was rather enamoured by it. It seemed full of promise, as a sufficiently esoteric word to be used in writing. There was a hitch, though: I did not fully understand what it meant. Despite the succinct explanation provided by the omniscient Michael Crichton, I was confused when it did not quite match its English dictionary meaning. At least, not in my head. Of course, I later understood that the subtle difference in meaning between the two sources was due to the difference in contexts: one scientific, one literary. In the former context, it means a model on which certain fundamental notions are based. In the latter, it means a perfect example. It is, of course more commonly used as a ‘paradigm shift’ i.e. a fundamental change in a model which changes the way we look and think about certain things. For instance, Copernicus’ hypothesis, followed by Kepler’s laws rubbished the erstwhile model of the earth being the centre of the universe, and is responsible for the way we view our solar system today: the sun at the centre surrounded by the planets. This was a classic paradigm shift for science. The reason paradigm shifts occur every few years is that new data obtained from experiments cannot be explained on the basis of existing models or paradigms anymore. Hence the need for new ones.

‘Powder’, I feel, is a classic paradigm shift for Indian television, both contexts considered.

At the outset, it was billed as a story of a group of Narcotics Control Bureau officers and their war against drug smuggling led by a kingpin, set in Mumbai. It seemed a classic good versus evil, us against them, kind of a story, complete with a dashing daredevil guy, a comely, gun-toting girl, the old, wise mentor, all officers (a fact that lent a certain legitimate, exhilarating piquancy to the proceedings) and a sinister villain to boot. Or so I thought. We are introduced to NCB officers Usmaan (Manish Choudhary), Mahendra (Rahul Bagga), Brinda (Geetika Tyagi) and the shadowy drug lord, Naaved Ansari (Pankaj Tripathi). What follows now is the result of what I saw unfold over the next 26 weeks with my own eyes. If it is excessive, it is simply a measure of the impact this show has had on me. I have just tried to provide a fitting response to what it has done to me.

Firstly, it is rare to see a work of such humaneness, especially on Indian television. It empathises equally with each and every one of its characters, irrespective of their legal and ethical underpinnings. In fact, the characters are frequently driven by their needs to tread both a legal and a moral morass. For instance, when Usmaan orders his officers to go out on the field and make seizures and arrests (solely to fill files and build records), Brinda immediately seeks out one of informers, a eunuch living beside railway tracks. The eunuch tips Brinda off about one of her kindred possessing a large stash of ganja. Brinda asks how much it would be. The eunuch naively asks her how much she would like to seize. Brinda uncomfortably replies that she would have to seize all of it. The eunuch pleads her not to as they would lose their livelihood (they double up as ganja sellers at night). Brinda pushes a thin wad of notes into her hand, and in a series of quickly-cut shots, barges into a hut, arresting its occupant and seizing all the ganja. The scene ends with a shot of Brinda’s informer on a foot overbridge, framed against the sky, looking down upon the drug bust with a cryptic smile. Both Brinda and her informer are driven by sheer need, as this scene clearly establishes, and it is this vulnerability that makes them so human. Brinda needs to fill record books and please her superiors, the eunuch and her clan simply need to survive and be on the right side of the law enforcers, even if they are on the wrong side of the law.

What is more startling is the way each and every one of the countless stories narrated, has an undertone of quiet melancholy amidst the chaos. The most poignant of them is perhaps that of Anuj’s informer, who, when asked to carry out an errand, breaks down to reveal that he has contracted AIDS, a result of his ‘smack’ addiction. Anuj’s reaction seems a bit unlikely at first: he slaps him out of sheer vexation and sympathy for his condition, and then provides him some money and, in gesture of genuine warmth, feeds him from his own plate. He even spares him the errand, but the informer insists on running it. But it is only later we realise. It isn’t a revelation; rather, in the quiet way it is depicted, almost an insight: the feeling of guilt that wracks Anuj as he sees his informer of four years walking away on what would probably be his last errand, a forlorn figure, into the night. The guilt that stems from Anuj’s role in a symbiotic relationship with the informer, a money-for-information barter, Anuj’s money fuelling the informer’s addiction, ultimately destroying his life. Brinda counters Anuj, reminding him that he had warned the informer about the dangers of using unclean needles. Anuj wryly replies that to think that the addict heeded his warning was akin to self-deception.

The background score by Vipin Mishra is a heady cocktail of bassy lounge, violin symphonies, electronica, all topped by an ominous foghorn that blends trippily into the lounge bits. The music pieces accompanying Ansari on screen are appropriately chilling, sharp and penetrating. In tandem with the extremely competent, controlled photography (N. Kartik Ganesh, reminiscent, at times, of the inimitable Wally Pfister), it creates a series of absolutely hypnotic images that are pure visual and aural pleasure. The camera is so tightly controlled it looks unflinchingly at every detail on-screen. There’s nothing really explicit on screen, but it is the tightness with which the camera looks at everything that is draining at times. N. Karthik’s greenish-yellow lighting of the interrogation rooms is enough to lend it starkness, it doesn’t need any bulb hanging in the dark. Similarly, the lighting and set decor (featuring a deep brown, elegantly finished, yet austerely regal throne) of Ansari’s den gives it a spartan, surreal, inner-sanctum kind of a feel.

A Mumbai resident of over 2 decades notwithstanding, the camera goes to places I could scarcely imagine to have existed in Mumbai; rather, places we choose not to imagine, even as we pass them by, in the all-pervading local trains. Yet the beauty lies in the fact that we can intuitively identify it as quintessential Mumbai. Nothing but. The ghettoes built around the docks, the ramshackle ruins housing goods and active trade worth millions of dollars, the sense of attrition in the slums arising out of unhealthy proximity, the presence of self-organising networks amidst the chaos of tortuous, esoteric by-lanes, the architectural juxtaposition of baffling incongruity, all whisperingly caressed by the ubiquitous local trains, such sights are endemic to Mumbai.

The dialogues speak to a form of Hindi forgotten of late in Hindi language content on TV and in film. They are seamlessly organic, terse, yet complex (not to be mistaken as complicated), penetrating, and with a clear sense of context to the story, as a whole. This last attribute is no mean feat, considering the story unfolds over 26 episodes each with a running time of roughly 50 minutes. Bose’s dialogue with Brinda towards the end is a case in point. He effectively sums up the reasons and motivations behind the entire drama, in the matter of a few seconds.

With this kind of subject matter at hand, one could easily give in to the temptation of writing acid-dipped, profane, hard-hitting diatribes in the vein of Vishal Bhardwaj and Anurag Kashyap (not that I’m belittling their dialogue-writing). In contrast, Mr. Sabharwal’s dialogues are gracefully poised and symmetrical, even in their most intense forms of usage. Mumbai street lingo, the ‘tehzeeb’ (etiquette) of a traditional Muslim household, drug deals, complex machinations of power ranging from the highest political circles to the street-level hierarchy, as well as the mechanics and economics of drug trade, the techniques of converting ‘black’ money to ‘white’, interrogations, face-offs, double-crosses, forensic reports, politics, finance, authentic dialogue in Arabic, Nigerian and Chinese, are all worded with equal dexterity. The characters, even when threatening each other seem to respect each other as individuals, if not as equals, absurd as that may sound. No profanities at all, except in a couple of cases.

A case in point being the scene in which Naaved, before leaving for an unknown destination, entrusts the complete responsibility of managing the trade on Wasim, his younger brother. The dialogue and its delivery by Pankaj Tripathi and Amitosh Nagpal is so exact, it touches deeper notes, evokes deeper implications about the inseparable intertwining of business with family, about trust that is built not just on love, but darker emotions. The consequences of breaking such a trust are more than just loss of love, there is so much more at stake. The gravitas that the actors lend to this scene (that is essentially just one explaining the locations of the godowns and smuggled goods) makes it unforgettable.

Another scene past compare is the one in which Dayal, Ansari’s counsel tells him about Jagdale’s offer to trade information with him about the NCB-SIU investigation for money. Jagdale is an Anti-Narcotics Cell officer, a seemingly bitter rival of NCB and its officers. Wasim drops in on their conversation in the middle and Naaved prompts him to narrate a novel business proposal to Dayal. Wasim’s proposal is to create an exchange based on “fluctuating” cocaine prices. Being the prime dealers in the drug in Mumbai, they plan to control the cocaine prices and thus earn money off this venture. Dayal is so impressed that he wordlessly hands Wasim his business card. Seeing this, Naaved explains Wasim the true import of that act. Naaved produces another of Dayal’s business cards, one given to him by Dayal the first time he ever offered Naaved his services. He has preserved it carefully, even though the details on the card have long changed; he has preserved it as an heirloom, a token of a relationship treasured above all else. Wasim is visibly moved and, to hide his emotions, excuses himself to go back to work. While just at the door, he is told by Naaved that he, Wasim, may handle the entire delivery of a drug consignment all by himself and that he does not need to ask or tell Naaved anything about it. It is the first time that Naaved has bestowed the entire responsibility of a delivery on Wasim. He has finally come of age in the eyes of his idol, his own elder brother. Wasim is so overcome with emotion that he simply goes to his wife and shares a few silent moments with her.

The narrative is as much driven by plot as by the characters, again something not seen very often. In fact, the plot is so attuned to its characters that the narrative seems entirely character-driven at times. Take, for instance, Brinda’s moment of indiscretion in Delhi before a Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officer. Brinda’s character, at that juncture, is that of a rookie officer, unsure of herself in her dealings with an officer of a rival agency, yet tempted by the lure of vital information and gullible enough to be led into meeting the DRI officer by her fellow NCB officer. So what ensues is a narrative development whereby Brinda reveals Ansari’s name to a DRI officer, (in return for what she feels is vital information) to introduce DRI into Ansari’s case and, hence, the narrative. It seems perfectly in sync with Brinda’s vulnerability at that point but, in fact, is a very well-disguised plot device to introduce DRI into the narrative. The director beautifully sets up her character to prevent this device from coming off as a kind of a reverse deus ex machina, to thicken the plot.

The performances, bar none, are expositions of subtlety and nuance. With this work, Atul Sabharwal has, probably irrevocably, altered my taste for the pitch and tone of dramatic acting. Indeed for the better. All, and I repeat, all the actors invest their portrayals with just enough form as to make the viewer feel the contours of their characters underneath the garb of performance in a very nearly tactile way. It is aided, of course, by Mr. Sabharwal’s photographic characterization. Allow me to present a few examples from the herd.

The first is Javed Khan’s portrayal of the retired, small-town lawyer Siddiqui. Javed Khan has played a host of bumbling side roles in the early 90’s, most notably in ‘Andaz Apna Apna’ and ‘Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi’, and recently, a more dignified one in ‘Chak De India’. Here he plays a character that has echoes in Om Prakash’s role in ‘Zanjeer’, a man so hell-bent on eradicating a form of addiction from society, he doesn’t care which side of the law he is on, doesn’t care if he destroys himself in the process. The entire goal of Siddiqui’s existence is to destroy drug-trafficking networks and gangs, rather than, just seize drugs. The first lesson that he gives Brinda in his office in Bhilwara challenges all that she has been taught to do. It leaves her stunned. The power of that scene is ineffable. It has to be simply experienced. Javed Khan imbues such forceful authority in his laboured speech, it’s almost like a prophet admonishing a wayward follower. He stuns Brinda even more when he reveals his near-insane habit of making heroin purchases just to plumb the various local trafficking networks. He plays Siddiqui with an all-consuming zeal underneath his haggard form, a child-like stubbornness and a dangerous optimism bordering on the insane, as someone for whom no price is too great to fulfil his desire. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the drug trade, of narcotics laws, of the workings of smuggling networks, and, more importantly, the unorthodox way he uses this treasure-trove of knowledge to beat the smugglers at their own game, his consternation at the recent state of law enforcement, his empathy for the hapless ignorance of the poppy farmers, his is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve seen on screen. His authoritative narrative account of the Opium wars and of the flourishing of Bombay and Calcutta due to opium trade gives me gooseflesh, for some unknown reason.

Next up is Maneesh Verma’s riveting turn as DRI officer Ashwini Khanna. His opening dialogue with his senior contains some of the driest wit around. He is put on the Ansari case by his senior, who, in the same brilliantly penned sequence, makes it clear to Ashwini the difference between a target (Ansari) and an enemy (Usmaan). Usmaan had in the past filed a case against DRI for picking on a suspect who happened to be Usmaan’s informer. We learn that Ashwini’s smarting from an all-too-recent divorce, highly educated, and nursing a terribly bruised ego. The combined forces of DRI’s age-old rivalry with NCB, especially his boss’s personal grudge against Usmaan, the desire to redeem himself in his own eyes and assuage his ego, drive him to work on the case like a man possessed. Just watch his first scene with the comely forensic expert Dr. Lal. When he explains the various stages of drug smuggling vis-a-vis the working of DRI, and provides the much-married Dr. Lal wisdom about marriage and its pitfalls, and wishes that he had met her earlier to her face, in the same goddamn breath, we are left stunned not only by his character and his portrayal, but also by the dexterity of the writing. Later, he goes a step further and tells her that if he were having an affair with her, he would want to her husband to know it, just to make him feel the pain. He unabashedly tells her that his divorce has greatly improved his interrogation skills and that he loves watching people in pain and distress. Dr. Lal is naturally repulsed by his sheer audacity and cruelty. Yet she is attracted by his disarming candour and passion. As are we, the viewers. A truly clenched act by Maneesh Verma. He almost seems to chew and spit words out of his mouth with a bitter sardony at the world he thinks is unfairly happier than him.

Which leaves Naaved Ansari, played by Pankaj Tripathi.

This is one of those all-too-rare instances when a character is created almost entirely by the one enacting it. Naaved Ansari, as a character on paper, in my humble opinion, may not be so remarkable, considering he is the chief antagonist of this saga. Yes, he is a drug smuggler; but his approach to the drug trade is as dispassionate as that of an ordinary businessman. As Usmaan once says, neither Ansari nor any of his family members goes anywhere within a mile of the drugs that he sells. No flashy clothing or glamorous lifestyle.

Yes, he even has a tightly knit family, unquestioningly loyal to him, despite knowing what he does. Beyond that, he has an organisation so intricate and labyrinthine, that he alone knows it inside out. But as a character, he remains enigmatic, shadowy. He has a past filled with violent coups and double-crossings in his rise from the docks to a businessman with an apparently clean record. But it does not seem to weigh down on him at all. Most of his conflicts in the story are entirely business-driven. He is as normal as any average businessman except for what he deals in.

Yet, for the time that Pankaj Tripathi is on-screen, he OWNS it, the way a virtuoso owns the stage. He portrays such depth that a mere nod or some half-formed noise in his gullet, contains a world of meaning, and often, menace. Thoughts seem to flit across his mind creating flickers across his face. Consider the scene in which he interrogates Selva, about the goods that were stolen from his godown by Raghav, Selva’s boss and Ansari’s bitter rival. Again, the camera and lighting create a subterranean environment for the interrogation. The only outlet is a distant doorway of blinding light framed against which is the crooked silhouette of Raja, leaning on his stick. Ansari simply questions him twice about his goods. Selva feigns ignorance. Ansari, with a slight smile playing on his lips, asks Selva rhetorically: “Tujhe kya lagta hai, mujhe pata nahi chalega Raghav ne mere maal ka ek bhi gram bazaar mein utaara to?” (Do you think I wouldn’t know if Raghav sells even a gram of my substance in the market?) The smile vanishes in an instant from his face. In the next scene a corpse is found floating in the Mahim creek. It is Selva’s.

The only time when Ansari’s iron-knit mantle is well and truly shattered is when his godown is robbed by Raghav. This tarnishes his record and denigrates him before his superiors in Dubai, who, as a result, consider him to be incapable of managing the trade in Mumbai from Dubai, and tell him so. Ansari, who, presumably, had put a lot on the line to achieve his dream of settling down in Dubai and managing the entire drug trade eastwards of Africa, is apoplectic with rage and frustration. The scene where he locks himself up in his room and starts hyperventilating, while convulsively shoving a magazine in and out of a pistol, before finally erupting in an animal snarl, is unbelievable even as we watch it.

But the crowning glory for me is his first face-off with Usmaan over a cup of tea in a roadside cafe. The plot and the mise-en-scene leading upto the confrontation is so masterful, the actors are so goddamn precise, the dialogue is so fittingly natural, this is where this piece of work reaches its zenith. As four NCB officers and one ANC officer converge upon him in the cafe, all Naaved Ansari does is calmly sip tea. He doesn’t even as much as look at them even though they continue to stare at him, aghast to see him in person. Or at Usmaan as he slowly walks up to him. The fact that Ansari knows Usmaan is already there and walking up to him, yet acts as if he is unaware of it, until the exact instant that Usmaan sits at his table facing him, is conveyed to the viewers ever so subtly, yet surely, by Pankaj Tripathi that he has become one of my favourite actors since. He almost seems to be meditating on the workings of fate as he faces his nemesis. It elevates the scene to a trance-like state.

Manish Chaudhary finally gets a role worthy of his prodigious talent. There is no dearth of actors playing conflicted characters. But very few actors can portray their inner conflict in a way so crystal clear that they seem to share their angst with viewers. The more external and obvious of Usmaan’s struggles is with Ansari. But it is his internal struggle that he reveals mostly without words: his struggle to control his impulses that urge him to go beyond the law for fear of inspiring similar behaviour among those under him; his struggle to control his own latent ego and sense of self-worth in the presence of younger officers; his struggle with the bureaucracy within the various law-enforcement agencies; his struggle to come to terms with the intra- and inter-departmental politics, the extent to which people are willing to go to achieve their ends and the sheer lack of ethics not only in the drug trade but also in combating it. Atul Sabharwal provides him neither with fire-and-brimstone monologues nor thunderous action scenes (unless we count the scene towards the end, when he’s past his tipping point and, kind of, goes berserk on a lowly drug dealer). As Usmaan, the old warhorse, the main driving force of the resistance, as it were, against Naaved Ansari, all Manish Chaudhary has is his uncanny ability to manifest every thought in his character’s head with his face, voice and person. And we feel the complete charge. A scene that uniquely illumines his inner turmoil is the one when he and Kartik manage to nab Khalid.

That is not to say the other actors are inferior in any way. Geetika Tyagi, Rahul Bagga, Subrat Dutta, Amitosh Nagpal, Rishi Prasad are all flawless. The actors playing Kartik, Raja, Jagdale, Julie, Rati, Shiven, Dayal, Khalid and each and every one of the other parts (I regret not knowing their names) are all perfect.

Atul Sabharwal has created a kaleidoscopic tapestry of countless, indelible colours, each of which is perfectly illumined, has a distinct purpose and leaves a definite impression upon the viewer. For this feat, we have his editor, Irene Dhar Malik to thank, in no small measure. Coalescing over 1000 minutes of continuously shot footage featuring a gamut of emotions, moods, locations, characters, subplots and details into a seamlessly consistent, coherent narrative singlehandedly is a herculean task and boy, oh boy, does she pull it off! To put it into perspective, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy was edited by five different editors to produce the extended DVD cut that lasted 683 minutes. The total running time of the theatrical versions of the three films put together was about 2 hours shorter.

In a rare print interview, Atul Sabharwal said he started his research on this subject since 2001 and put the script together over eight years of research. The only thing more remarkable than this fact is his decision to make it into a TV series instead of a film. Given the precipitous fall of the quality of TV programming to depths that have consistently amazed us over the last ten years, his decision gives us, hapless viewers, hope, like nothing else. The fact that his decision was backed by Yash Raj Films, whose quality graph over the same period has been somewhat similar, is poetic in its symmetry.

And what a backing it is! Actual locations spread over three countries, the ganja plantations of Chamba, the poppy fields of Madhya Pradesh and the Govt. opium factory in Rajasthan, not the least of these; warehouses, ghettoes, the interiors of actual offices, courts, nightclubs; the detailing behind the look of the characters, their wardrobes, patois, accents, inflections all reek of authenticity. Every inch of this epic production has been handled with marvellous, meticulous care that shows.

But all of this would still not have counted for as much as it does, were it not for the inherent sincerity and maturity of the story and narrative. It is populated with characters with a strong work ethic. There is very little attempt, unlike other similar ventures in the past, to glamourise or romanticise crime or the work of law enforcement agencies. By relying more on adherence to procedure than wilfully eschewing it for the thrill of flouting rulebooks, it breaks new ground and serves as a benchmark for other works in similar territory. In fact, it shows what the consequences of circumventing office bureaucracy are, even with the best of intentions, right at the start when Brinda is punished by her superior for (prematurely) issuing a summons against a chemicals firm with “no regard for the paperwork.”   

A sizeable proportion of the conflict in the story is entirely work-related. It is not simply about the one-upmanship between co-workers, but also about the relationships between superiors and their subordinates, between officers of rival organisations who are forced to work together by a common target, the struggle to maintain a strictly professional interest in a case that has become too personal for comfort and the insidious ways in which cases take over the lives, sleeping and waking hours of those solving them.

When people around me first heard about this show, it evoked rather predictable responses that were mostly age-based. The elderly age-group, closer to God and Aastha channel, yet worldly enough to watch at least three daily soaps without fail, were downright dismissive of what they thought was a serial that was ostensibly anti-drugs, about the underworld, corrupt policemen and violence and, hence, generally dark, but one that would eventually glamorise drugs and everything else mentioned above, and thus be a negative influence on the impressionable youth.

The middle aged working group of people were dismissive too, but in their own dispassionate, detached and busy way: they simply did not think it exceptional enough to feature in their bursting schedule.

The young generation hooked onto American and British TV, fiercely contemptuous of any Indian serial (apart from those on MTV), simply did not think this one serial featuring mostly newcomers (no known names, not even known TV faces, heavens!) would match their lofty tastes for authenticity and thrill.

Most of them did not end up watching the serial at all. Those that grudgingly did had their preconceived notions challenged at every step. They could not believe their eyes that a serial about cops and the underworld would have such little physical violence and so much dialogue that kept them pondering long after it had been uttered. They could not believe the fact that nobody screamed or even as much as raised their voice while speaking. They could not believe that they actually had to work out the motivations of the characters and that there were multiple motivations, not just a single one. Most of all, they could not believe that a serial on Indian television could be made responsibly and that it could respect the audience.

I now regret to say that I was one of those incredulous pig-heads initially, not for long, before the dormant proselyte in me awoke.

As I watched it episode by episode, ‘Powder’ continued to give me hope. And now, after having seen it completely, it continues to give me faith. Which, looking at its creator, are pretty much the only things we need to create something magical.