The Idyllic Indian Village, Interrupted
Photo: Karan Madhok
Contemporary OTT narratives like Panchayat and Nirmal Pathak Ki Ghar Wapsi are revisiting the rural through the lens of an urban outsider, in an evocation of Sri Lal Shukla’s acclaimed 1968 novel Raag Darbari.
- Ananya
Encountering rural landscapes—whether through cinema or literature—brings with it a familiar form of comfort and excitement. To glimpse small towns and villages with their varied eccentricities is akin to the rush of finding the extraordinary in the mundane through storytelling. As our nation progressed, the cinematic focus shifted invariably toward urban landscapes, following the heavy migration from the villages to the cities. Often seen as impure and overpopulated while consuming the working class, literature and cinema has both showcased the urban in stark contrast to the rural.
Meanwhile, the rural—portrayed as pristine, pure and pastoral in contrary to urban life—is a narrative trope that has been bestowed and sustained repeatedly in Indian cinema and literature. Scenes featuring the vast expanse of greenery, clusters of people engaged in conversations throughout the day, the serene calm of the dawn and the dusk, and the oversimplified lives of the rural settlers, are often part of the mainstream illustration of any narration that portrays Indian rural life. We have been nudged to romanticize the pastoral, and—as urban audiences viewing from the lens of an outsider—we have been instilled with the feeling of seeing the rural through rose-tinted glasses.
In many such narratives, the ‘outsider’ is often an urban-educated man who dwells in the city before entering the threshold of the rural. He may be a little lost, barren from the hustle of the city, hoping to rekindle a purpose for himself.
These themes are not new to Indian cinema or literature; from Devdas to Swades, the village either is catalysis to the character development of the protagonist or simply stands as a mere background character. The rural rarely gets its own voice in mainstream media or literature.
Thus, when Sri Lal Shukla wrote Raag Darbari in the late 60s, it was like the rural landscape of the northern belt of India had finally got its biographer.
Clad with their ethos and armed with high idealism, these young men charge through the rural landscape only to be frustrated, dismembered, and broken down by the considerable complexities of rural living. This trope is effective in part because the audience who belong in majority to the urban landscapes are able to sympathize and share the same wonder as the urban protagonists in the series.
More than fifty years after Shukla’s iconoclastic satire of the provincial, the rural again holds centre-stage. With the release and popularity of OTT series such as Panchayat and Nirmal Pathak Ki Ghar Wapsi, it becomes hard not to recognise how much the rural portrayal has changed over the years—and so have our protagonists, who are somewhat less-than-heroes. It is exciting and refreshing to see that recent OTT platforms have delivered stories that follow the lines of Shukla’s village biography.
Employing the age-old myth of homecoming, numerous plots script young, educated, city-bred aspirational men who believe the rural can provide them a respite from urban life. Clad with their ethos and armed with high idealism, these young men charge through the rural landscape only to be frustrated, dismembered, and broken down by the considerable complexities of rural living. This trope is effective in part because the audience who belong in majority to the urban landscapes are able to sympathize and share the same wonder as the urban protagonists in the series.
Published in 1968, Raag Darbari narrates the character Ranganath’s experience as an educated but naive city dweller, whose rural romanticisation is cut short by the reality of ugly panchayat and municipal politics, berating corruption and age-old crippling caste and patriarchal discrimination. Although in an ‘all is not lost’ narrative, Shukla doesn’t take a bitter turn or judge the rural for its shortcoming; instead, he merely passes a reflective image of how things are in the provincial, with its slow progression and resistance to any development.
While Rangnath’s story might be the face of crippling post-Nehruvian cynicism, there are streaks of similarity in our 21st-century, Gen Z protagonists from Panchayat and Nirmal Pathak. The eponymous Pathak and Abhishek Tripathi are both young, city-bred educated men, who turn to the rural, after feeling hopeless about their respective future prospects.
In the SonyLIV series Nirmal Pathak Ki Ghar Wapsi (2022), Nirmal (Vaibhav Tatwawadi), who intends to immerse his father’s ashes in the village river, returns 24 years later to reconcile with his family—and inadvertently gain a story as a writer. Akin to the homecoming of Ram in Ramayana, Nirmal is heartily welcomed and finds himself enamoured by the charms of the village for the first few episodes. This rosy view, however, subsides from Episode 2, as Nirmal is exposed to deeply-entrenched problems and the rigid beliefs of the community.
In contrast, Panchayat’s protagonist Abhishek (Jitendra Kumar) finds the village as merely a stepping stone for his career. In the Prime Video series first released in 2020, Abhishek settles in the village of Phulera as Panchayat Sachiv for a decent salary, while the rest of his friends run ahead in the chase of an MBA and high-paid placements. Panchayat is a candid portrayal of a coming-of-age young adult who grapples with fulfilling his ambitions, while looking for some practical rooting for himself in his day-to-day life. A village Panchayat’s secretary by day, and a CAT exam aspirant at night, Abhishek is initially less than enthralled by the village. As time moves on, however, he learns to embrace the breaks and flows in the hum-drum of rural intricacies.
These are not stories of traditional alpha heroes. Inevitably, in their exchange with the villagers, Nirmal and Abhishek are entangled in these rural social complexities, tracking problems as advanced as patriarchy, municipal corruption, panchayat politics, bureaucratic red-tape, and the still-prevalent play of muscle power that intimidates the lifestyle.
And yet, while the men are the lens of the narratives, a rising marker of portraying rural reality is through the experiences of women—their visibility, or lack thereof. In Shukla’s Raag Darbari, women are limited to the veiled, inaccessible spaces of their homes; their only mention is found at the dawn of the day, seen with a lota in the hidden spaces of the farms (in the pre-Sulabh Shauchalaya days), their story minimized only to highlight their plight due to the non-availability of public toilets. Raag Darbari makes it evident in its silence that women were on the margins of any representation of rural life.
One can perhaps trace a smear of development with some increased visibility of women in the rural landscapes in the 75-plus year of India’s independence. In Nirmal Pathak’s tale, the protagonist is distraught when he discovers that his birth mother’s reality is reduced to the life of a glorified ‘naukrani’ (household servant). Not being able to leave her family behind to go along with her husband, she places her position as the elder daughter-in-law in priority to being a wife. In this context, the series does a remarkable job to portray a telling situation of a woman confined to her household, who is duty-bound to the family before her partner and his ideals.
Meanwhile in Panchayat, Rinki—the daughter of the village chief sarpanch—plays an active role and engages in the questions of women’s empowerment in Indian villages. On the rural front, Rinki has been provided the best that could be offered to her. Still, there are complications: Rinki is 23 and single, posing an older-than-time cause of worry for her father. Marriage. Her exchange with Abhishek further makes it evident how women like Rinki are still enwrapped in the confines of the ideology that suggests that they are best-suited only for being a bride. The plot grounds the theory that employment for women in provincial regions is only favoured in the case of extreme monetary need. It leaves little scope of choice for the woman herself.
If showrunners in India are finally tangling with complex gender dynamics, the issue of caste still remains outside the purview of many creators. Caste is hardly broached; yet, as rural visibility finds spaces in literature and cinema, caste representation invariably and indirectly is brought into the picture.
Notably, the entire cast of the shows and the three main protagonists mentioned above (Rangnath, Nirmal, and Abhishek) hail from upper caste backgrounds. Their view often clashes with a sympathetic, but distanced ideal of caste justice.
It is unavoidable to question whether Shukla foresaw the rural still plagued with the same problems even decades after the release of Raag Darbari, or whether he could’ve seen that the complications that accompany rapid development would add to the cocktail of complexities in rural life, too.
Nirmal’s attempt at dignifying the caste problem and bringing it to the forefront is admirable, but it hails a distanced idea of lending support and voice to the victimized community. His impatience displays that the character is ignorant and naïve, and furthermore lacks the understanding of how deeply caste hierarchy and discrimination is instilled in Indian society. The expectancy of an overnight change is idealistic and indicative that the character of Nirmal requires further development.
Development is required in the external world, too, and the themes of rural development churn along, unavoidably, in the background. There is an eerie similarity in how Shukla irresistibly portrays the charm of the rural, as life goes on regardless of the tribulations of caste, patriarchy, bureaucratic dissemination, and stagnation. The comedic value of Panchayat reverberates the bar set by Shukla, where, regardless of life’s larger problems, the characters in the village remain in a mood of carefree laughter, managing to engage themselves in trivial everyday issues. This humour alone alleviates the narrative from complete despair to one that the audience can understand, sympathize, mourn—and yet, find the space for laughter.
Shukla goes on to great lengths not only to showcase the problems of the provincial, but how citizens grow accustomed to these challenges. The nonchalance and acceptance of the rural orthodoxy and dogmatism by the village people often baffles the protagonist.
One example is when Rangnath’s faith dissolves in the election process of the young democratic country, as he becomes aware of the malpractices employed by the powerful to remain in power. In Nirmal, the protagonist dishearteningly realises that even the youth of the village do not offer any resistance to practices like casteism, allowing it to permeate the society without resistance. Panchayat’s Abhishek, meanwhile, recognizes that development in the provincial is often met by more hostility inside the village than from the administrative system.
Nirmal, Abhishek and Rangnath all experience the local complexities and characteristics from a wide prism, entering a pastoral world that attempts to foot itself towards social change. The two OTT series encourage the viewers to partake in a form of time travel, to imagine themselves in a time capsule of India before the rapid influx of modernity.
And yet, it is unavoidable to question whether Shukla foresaw the rural still plagued with the same problems even decades after the release of Raag Darbari, or whether he could’ve seen that the complications that accompany rapid development would add to the cocktail of complexities in rural life, too.
Even in the face of such questions, it is indeed a breakthrough moment for narratives of village life being given a space in mainstream pedestals in India. Hopefully, as more creators usher the rural into visibility, viewers will see rural life not only through the tinted filters of an outsider, but as it is in itself.
***
Ananya is a researcher, writer and a literary academic in training. She has a stubborn streak of interest in culture, travel, cinema and creative literature, penning down her words on the same. You can find more of her work here. Ananya is on Instagram: @fadingeversince and Twitter: @na_ananya.
