Blood Spilled and Blood Shared
Season 2 of Prime Video’s hit show Mirzapur continued its debauchery of gore, lust, back-stabbings, and politics from the UP/Bihar belt. But at its core, the series is an exploration of fathers and sons, of expectations and fallouts, of family lost and family found.
Beyond the overdose of blood and lust and drugs and politics and more blood, most of the run-time of the second season of Mirzapur actually consists of surreptitious meetings: backroom dealings, alliances made and alliances lost, trust broken, backs stabbed. Hunting for power, respect, and revenge, the characters are always plotting among and against one another. In this revisit to the chaotic world of Eastern Uttar Pradesh (Purvanchal) and nearby, no one is to be trusted—not even family.
One of these conspiratorial meetings pits Sharad Shukla (Anjum Sharma) with JP Yadav (Pramod Pathak). Sharad is the heir to the ‘bahubali’ (the mafia king) of Jaunpur, whose father Rati Shankar was killed at the hands of the Mirzapur crime family, the Tripathis, in the previous season. JP is the disgruntled brother of Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, with ambitions to the highest seat of power in the state for himself. The two have common enemies, and JP suggests to Sharad that their alliance would be the logical next move, continuing the relationship that he once shared with Sharad’s father.
Sharad, however, is in no such mood for past sentimentalities. “Hamare duniya mein rishte peere pe nahin, profit se chalte hai,” he says. In our world, relationships are not formed by generations. They are formed by profits.
Even with the generation gap, the apples rarely fall too far from the tree, forever caught in a tug-of-war for their soul: Do sons fight to inherit the titles of their fathers? Or do they rebel to be something else entirely, not just independent but also in-charge?
In its latest season (released October 23), Prime Video’s wildly popular Mirzapur relishes in the examination of generation gap, of estranged family, of shared blood retributed by spilled blood, of fathers with high expectations, and sons with bigger ambitions, and of the search for profit and power mattering more than relationships. Even with the generation gap, the apples rarely fall too far from the tree, forever caught in a tug-of-war for their soul: Do sons fight to inherit the titles of their fathers and mothers? Or do they rebel to be something else entirely, not just independent but also in-charge?
In his 1862 masterpiece Fathers and Sons, set in the Russian countryside in the foreground of a nation facing political and cultural revolutions, Ivan Turgenev speaks of these and other philosophical paradoxes, of those who wish to preserve the old way (Pavel Petrovitch), those who are rushing forward into the new world (Bazarov), and fathers (Nikolai Petrovich) and sons (Arkady) that share this tug of war between the past and the future, between inheriting culture and creating culture. Arkady finds himself in the heart of dilemma, influenced by his ‘nihilist’ friend Bazarov, but answerable to his father and uncle in the countryside, who try to preserve their way of life.
In Mirzapur, Munna Tripathi—Akhanda’s son and the hopeful heir as Mirzapur’s bahubali—is a little bit of Arkady and little bit of Bazarov, wanting the approval of the previous generation but striving for rebellion to mark his own autonomy. Played by Divyendu, Munna returns as perhaps the most complex of characters in season 2, a son who is as desperate to make his father proud as he is to replace him.
Mirzapur’s first season was a surprise success, and gained a cult following particularly among those invested in stories of crime and chaos from the politically unstable pockets of North India’s Hindi/Bhojpuri belt. Like many derivates of Quentin Tarantino, the show takes particular delight in sowing humour in the seams of extreme violence. As someone born and bred in that part of the world myself, the show hit a particularly familiar chord in its accents, visual settings, and language (the word ‘chutia’ is thrown around more than any other noun). Everyone that grew up in the Purvanchal area (Varanasi, Mirzapur, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Mau, etc.) has been somewhat familiar with the region’s instability, with the nexus of crime-lords, police, politicians, and shoddy industrialists. While Mirzapur heavily exaggerates and romanticises the worst of this world, its themes aren’t too far from the truth.
Season 2 reframed itself in a Game of Thrones-style race competition for power, with a number of factions competing for the kursi—‘throne’—of Mirzapur’s Bahubali. The stakes for this power are raised when the current King of Mirzapur—Akhanda—gains an important seat in the hall of the chief minister. Like GoT, Mirzapur dives into this cocktail of gore, lust, politics, back-stabbings and a gratuitously high body-count.
Families and factions circle like vultures over the seats of power. There are the Tripathis—rulers of Mirzapur—led by Akhanda, a role that Pankaj Tripathi plays with the quiet dignity and ruthlessness mimicking a younger Don Corleone. His father is the show’s sleaziest old man (and Mirzapur’s former King) Satyanand Tripathi. Akhanda’s son is Munna, who is ambitious and impatient to prove himself, shed off his father’s overbearing shadow, and become the new King.
But the Tripathis have many enemies, and chief among them are Guddu and Golu. The duo has a bond of mutual loss to the hands of Munna, each losing a sibling and a romantic partner—and in Guddu’s case, the pregnant mother of his child—in the shocking finale of the first season. Guddu and Golu spend the season in a ten-episode arc of revenge, recuperating while on the run, making their own alliances to gain power, preparing and plotting to kill the Tripathis and snatch Mirzapur.
The themes of Turgenevesque change—and resistance to change—are abound. Everyone has daddy issues. Guddu’s father Ramakant is a reputed, honest lawyer, determined to seek justice even if it means his own son would face the brunt of the law. Father and son rarely look eye to eye; but when they do, it makes for an emotionally-charged moment. Ali Fazal’s Guddu seethes with quiet sorrow and rage, a balance of sensitivity and danger. His performance for most of the show is tense, a tightly-strung restraint, ready to snap at any opportune moment.
Opposite him is Golu, played by Shweta Tripathi, who has also left her home—and corrupt policeman father—behind after the tragedies of season 1. From the very first moment on screen, Tripathi is a scene stealer. Without saying much, her eyes communicate deep complexities of pain, desire, and revenge. It’s a masterclass in reaction-acting as she goes from strength to strength in the course of the ten episodes.
In Jaunpur, Sharad reluctantly returns to his father’s business, balanced between the intentions to follow his father’s footsteps or carve his own. Twins Bharat and Shatrughan Tyagi from Bihar have complicated dynamics between each other and with their father, Dadda “Lilliput” Tyagi. Shatrughan, the younger twin by five minutes, is hungry to please his father in this world of trade and muscle; and at the same time, follow his instincts to defy his own family.
Then there is the state’s seat of political power, the chief minister Surya Pratap Yadav in Lucknow. Surya Pratap’s fraught relationship with his younger brother JP—and the younger’s jealousy—drive much of the show’s political machinations. All the while, Surya Pratap’s widowed daughter—Madhuri—becomes the centrepiece around which the worlds of politics and crime will begin to orbit. She and Munna bond over the over-controlling grasp of their respective fathers, the complaint of every successor magnified to dangerously high-stakes.
It is the three generations of Tripathi men—Satyanand, Akhanda, and Munna—who form the show’s emotional core. The three have distinct moral codes and temperaments, and yet all share the ambition for power, whether it is by domineering over the women at home, determining the state’s political fate, or earning the fear of their contemporaries. Their relationships oscillate between love and frustration, pride and patricide. And from Akhanda’s pregnant wife Beena, there is another heir on the way.
While Munna was almost a one-tone villain in the first season—predictable only in his unpredictable instinctiveness—he has given more room for evolution in season 2. His emotional turbulence is the engine of this series, as the show explores the roots of his ruthless anger and the frustrations of his denied ambitions. He is a violent and heartbroken prince that you love to hate, but he is also a son who simply doesn’t have patience for his father.
As a form of pure pulp fiction, Mirzapur leaves nothing subtle to the viewers imagination, and every idea is taken to its extreme end of carnal instincts. The show’s thrill lies in its no-holds barred exploitation of these stories, where it seems like no subject is too taboo—except, perhaps, for the real specific politics of the state. For a show so grounded in the political machinery of Eastern UP, there is surprisingly little heed given to the issues of caste and religion, no nod to the dangerous rise in Hindutva politics and mob violence. Women are given a little more agency and use their sexuality as a weapon; and yet, the show barely scratches the surface of the deep roots of patriarchal suppression and gendered violence festering in the country.
Munna’s emotional turbulence is the engine of this series, as the show explores the roots of his ruthless anger and the frustrations of his denied ambitions. He is a violent and heartbroken prince that you love to hate, but he is also a son who simply doesn’t have patience for his father.
The writing is often cliched, with dialogue that seems more interested in meme immortality. The plot pacing is also wildly inconsistent: characters jump from city to city with little lapse in time; some characters have an entire wealth of information without any explanation, and some spend several episodes in obvious blind spots.
When the first season of Mirzapur dropped in 2018, the show had a novelty like none other, borrowing the energy of Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur in a different configuration. But by 2020, that novelty had already become formulaic, leaving the audience numb to the excesses of the show (with some exceptions, of course—including a particularly unforgettable flashlight in Mau).
But what Mirzapur 2 lacks in novelty, it makes up in its exploration of inherited pain, of generational violence, of fathers and sons. During a tense family dinner scene in the Tripathi mansion, Akhanda scolds Munna for his impatience, telling his son that he has no control over his emotions, that this weakness is the very reason why he can’t pass over the crown of Mirzapur to the frustrated Prince. Munna leaves his meal unfinished and gets off the table.
“Eat,” Akhanda instructs him to sit back down, but Munna has heard enough.
“Khana—na khana to hamara nirnay ho sakta hai na Papa?” Can I at least decide my meals, Papa?
We may never forgive Munna for his sadism and barbarity, or his callous lack of respect even for the unspoken code of bahubalis; but we can relate to him in his insecurity, in his need to please his father and prove himself, in his small victories for autonomy. With threats from all sides, the throne of Mirzapur balances in a precarious position. And the battle at home will eventually decide how the war outside is won.
***
Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose fiction, translation, and poetry have appeared in The Literary Review, The Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, FirstPost, and more. Karan is currently working on his first novel. Twitter: @karanmadhok1
