The Man Who Remembers
Jaideep Ahlawat again portrays Hathi Ram Chaudhary in the second season of Paatal Lok, the haggard cop whose memory serves both as a crime-solving device and as moral code to leave no life unforgotten.
The gag is a little too on-the-nose for comfort. Even after an avalanche of life-transforming tribulations, Jaideep Ahlawat’s Hathi Ram Chaudhary remembers a brief, fleeting detail about his son’s girlfriend, to which his wife, Renu (Gul Panag), reacts by comparing his memory to that of an actual hathi (elephant). The second season of Prime Video’s acclaimed thriller series Paatal Lok is filled with such examples of Chaudhary’s superior memory: from a cheery slogan behind an auto-rickshaw to the little detail about a torn rupee-note, the haggard Delhi police inspector recalls incidents, people, observations, and anecdotes with great ease. It’s a unique skillset, which, coupled with an unflinching investigate persistence, makes him the ideal protagonist for the series, as a (relatively) low-ranking officer uncovering conspiracies and scandals that could shock an entire nation.
Chaudhary’s memory, however, is far more than a Holmesian detection trick. It’s a grand equalizer: Everyone he encounters—powerful politicians, penniless orphans, nightclub owners in New Delhi, petty criminals in Nagaland, fellow police officers and drug peddlers—is important. Chaudhary gives them all an equal stake of humanity while plodding through the netherworld—paatal lok—for which the series is titled. And in his unconventional heroism, he challenges us to do the same.
Created by Sudip Sharma, the first season of Paatal Lok (2020) was loosely-based on Tarun Tejpal’s novel The Story of My Assassins. At its surface an investigative crime thriller, the season engaged with intersectional themes of politics, crony capitalism, communal violence, and media sensationalism in India. Ahlawat is introduced as Chaudhary, an East Delhi police inspector who faces deeper and deeper darknesses as he digs towards the truth.
Chaudhary gives them all an equal stake of humanity while plodding through the netherworld—paatal lok—for which the series is titled. And in his unconventional heroism, he challenges us to do the same.
The success of the first season came in the extended peak of a renaissance of OTT dramas from India, including series like Sacred Games, Kohhra, Dahaad, and many more, each with the ambition of submitting some greater truth about contemporary India through the prism of police procedurals. Thus, returning five years after its first season, many wondered if Paatal Lok would be able to break from these trends—and elevate itself over the genre.
With Ahlawat as its honing beacon once again, the second season of the series attempts to do exactly that. This time, the storytellers wisely choose to tread new ground by introducing characters and complications from Nagaland, a northeastern state often considered to be in the ‘margins’ of the national zeitgeist. It’s a region that is often caricaturized and clubbed together without nuance with other states in the northeast; or at worst, completely ignored (in one scene this season, Chaudhary is embarrassed by his superiors when he fails to point the state out on the map).
Paatal Lok might be the first time that Nagaland is centred—albeit briefly—in India’s pop culture mainstream. And true to form, the series doesn’t flinch from exposing a complete, comprehensive picture, warts and all: with good police and bad ones, heartbroken sons, and caring mothers, assassins and social-justice leaders, saints and sinners. Chaudhary is one of the funnels through which we see this world. He is a resolute Delhi-wallah thrust into the new environment, he discovers that even in its many, many differences, Nagaland, too, is a real place, with real people in real circumstances.
Season 2 begins—like many police-procedurals do—with a mysterious, brutal murder. A waiter at the Nagaland Sadan in New Delhi finds the decapitated body of influential Nagaland politician Jonathan Thom in the bathtub. The murder takes place while Thom was visiting Delhi to (reluctantly) engage in talks for a lucrative Nagaland Business Summit, which promises to bring in big-money investment for development in the state, but has been opposed by some local groups.
ACP Imran Ansari (Ishwak Singh) returns from Season 1, now a senior, hotshot police officer, and handed the responsibility of leading this politically-sensitive case. Ansari was once Chaudhary’s junior; now, Chaudhary must stand at attention at salute Ansari when visiting his impressive new office and watch Ansari receiving the media limelight from a distance. He returns home to a worried wife (Gul Panag) and rides around on a broke-down motorcycle while his brother-in-law (in the private sector) boasts of his new air-conditioned car.
While Ansari quickly rose up the ranks, Chaudhary has remained in statis, still working at the Jamuna Paar station, silently carrying the regret of lost opportunities. We first meet him as he begins to investigate the case of a missing person, a low-income former wedding band player Raghu Paswan (Shailesh Kumar). Soon, however, Chaudhary and Ansari realize that their cases are connected: There is a larger conspiracy behind Thom’s murder and Paswan’s disappearance—and many more people are killed or disappeared to protect the secret.
Since Chaudhary remembers everything, everyone is a source, and everywhere there are leads to the case. There are suspects across the rungs of society, including a special government advisor Kapil Reddy (Nagesh Kukunoor) holding some intricate secrets, or the troubled, mysterious club hostess Rose Lizo (Merenla Imsong) on the run. In the world of Paatal Lok, everything is connected to help complete the complex pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. A child living by the train tracks finds a discarded phone from an escaped suspect. A travel agent’s off-handed statement helps Chaudhary to make vital ties to the case.
The series takes its bold leap when Chaudhary and Ansari chase the trail of leads to Nagaland, falling deeper into a whirlpool of politics, finance, crime, family, drug abuse, and more. While Chaudhary and Ansari are used as a device to show the outsiders’ perspective to this world, the writers also wisely let the wide gamut of local characters speak for themselves.
The stress of the case is paralleled by the relationship between the two men, a younger senior and his elder junior, an initial awkwardness that soon thaws into friendship again. This is one of the many examples of how the series succeeds at being an intricate character study within the realms of the larger police procedural. Similarly, Paatal Lok invests its time in zooming closer to the bonds—built and broken—between the remaining members of Jonathan Thom’s kin: Thom’ son Reuben (LC Sekhose), fuming with righteous anger; and Thom’s wife Asenla (Rozelle Mero), who carries the burdens of this family’s guilts and secrets. The personal here is always political, and Paatal Lok focuses on both the big and the small.
It is this ‘permanent residence’, then, that aids Chaudhary to see the world from bottom-up, to place every individual on the same pedestal. This netherworld isn’t necessarily only a place of suffering, but a place that reduces the multiple complexities of humanity into the fuzzy contours of an estimation.
For the purpose of this piece, alas, a couple of spoilers are inevitable. First, Chaudhary accidently discovers that Ansari’s ‘girlfriend’ on the other end of those phone calls is actually a man. Paatal Lok handles this news not as a dramatic reveal, but in the gentle silences of understanding between the two men. At first surprised with the discovery, Chaudhary then begins to come to terms with his colleague’s relationship by comparing it to his own, to realize that there is little difference in the frustrations of domestic life: gay or straight.
But this moment of camaraderie is stunningly upended by a bitter aftertaste. While Chaudhary returns to Delhi for his son’s 18th birthday, Ansari is assassinated in Nagaland. The next time Chaudhary sees his friend, it’s while picking up his coffin at an airport in Delhi. Sorrow wells up his eyes, crashing the veneer of a hardened cop.
In one of the most powerful sequences in the show—and perhaps, in any comparable Indian OTT series—an unidentified man (Abhishek Kaushal) approaches the ambulance where Chaudhary and other policemen are transporting Ansari’s remains. Paatal Lok doesn’t need to spoon-feed us or have Chaudhary come to a loud realization about who this man is. Wordlessly, Chaudhary opens the ambulance door to let him in. When the vehicle hits a bump in the road, the man must place his palms on the coffin for support. This moment is his breaking point: He requests to be let out of the ambulance immediately—his back turned to Chaudhary and the other men—and he weeps in the strange privacy of a dark road on a lonely, Delhi night.
With Ansari’s early death, Paatal Lok also confirms that it is not afraid of a major risk, for the ‘netherworld’ doesn’t guarantee a hero’s journey to completion. The tale—and the rest of the world—must go on beyond them.
Now, between Delhi and Nagaland, with the help of other local fixers and cops like the SP Meghna Barua (played by an excellent Tillotama Shome), Chaudhary must go on, too: partly to avenge Ansari, partly with his continuing sense of persistence—for a case opened must eventually be closed. He must inherit the case of Thom’s murder from Ansari, but he must also not forget the disappeared Paswan. He is led by his honesty, his memory, and that foolish courage. He gets beaten and battered throughout the season, and sacrifices himself often to get closer to the resolution.
Eventually, Chaudhary will also have his stern moral code stirred, with impossible dilemmas that will ring with the viewer long after the eight-episode season comes to a conclusion: Will he tell the truth about a few lives, if the lie bebefits so many more?
In an early conversation, Chaudhary compares himself to a racehorse, who knows he’s not going to get a medal for his work, only some fodder. Yet, he says, he has to keep running—for that is all he knows. Perhaps, Paatal Lok is a sombre reminder to many of us trapped as anonymous racehorses in the larger system, quickly forgotten even in our heroisms, while the medals are handed elsewhere, the rich usually get richer, the powerful usually escape prosecution, and the poor usually pay with their freedom, or their lives.
Warning Chaudhary from taking yet another reckless plunge, Bittu Rehman—a local fixer in Nagaland—says, “Paatal Lok hai sir. Itna mat ghusiye ki meri tarah nilakna mushkil ho jaye.” It’s the netherworld. Don’t go in so deep that it will be hard for you to get out, like me. Chaudhary responds in a manner reminiscent of the character Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, one who was born in the darkness. “Main Paatal Lok ka permanent niwasi hoon,” he says. I’m a permanent resident of the netherworld.
It is this ‘permanent residence’, then, that aids Chaudhary to see the world from bottom-up, to place every individual on the same pedestal. This netherworld isn’t necessarily only a place of suffering, but a place that reduces the multiple complexities of humanity into the fuzzy contours of an estimation. It’s a country that faces tragedies like the stampede at this year’s Kumbh Mela, where there continues to be no specificity about the lives lost, beyond an approximated round number often reported by news agencies. In a populated country like India with a wide wealth gaps, the lives and deaths of the poor are often statistics rather than faces, where 63 million citizens are annually pushed into poverty because of healthcare costs, or at the rate of almost two people every second.
It is in this world that Chaudhary remembers. For every Jonathan Thom, there’s a Raghu Paswan; for every Kapil Reddy, there’s a Rose Lizo. To him, all the pieces matter—and no soul is left forgotten to weep alone as another corpse-laded ambulance passes them by.
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Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar. He is the author of Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis In India (2024) and A Beautiful Decay (2022), both published by the Aleph Book Company. His work has appeared in Epiphany, Sycamore Review, Gargoyle, Fifty Two, Scroll, The Plank, The Caravan, the anthology A Case of Indian Marvels (Aleph Book Company) and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2022 (Hawakal). You can find him on Twitter: @karanmadhok1 and Instagram: @karanmadhok.
