As Shankar Raman's sophomore feature Love Hostel releases, revisiting his assured debut in Gurgaon

With India’s OTT era well and truly underway, I often wonder about the legacy of some older Hindi movies had they been direct-to-streaming originals. Despite their long-time cult status, most of these movies came with a box-office asterisk. Imagine, for instance, if _Lamhe_ had been released as an Amazon Prime Video original. Imagine Om-Dar-B-Dar as a SonyLIV Original. Dhobi Ghat was destined to be a Netflix India Original. Ditto for the anti-romcom, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu. Perhaps the little-known Haryanvi drama, G Kutta Se, would have been widely watched, reviewed, and dissected as a ZEE5 Original. The most recent, though, would have been Shanker Raman’s Gurgaon.   The slick and stylishly sinister neo-noir thriller might have hit differently – like say, a _Raat Akeli Hai_ – as an exclusive streaming title. It did the festival circuit in 2016, and entered theaters in late 2017 for a hot second. The film is now streaming on Netflix India but remains largely forgotten, despite starring Pankaj Tripathi as a ruthless Godfather-like figure frustrated with his less-than-capable son a full year before Amazon Prime Video India Original show   _Mirzapur _ took the nation by storm. And almost two years before _Succession_ took the world by storm.

That it is “based on a true story” only confirms what most of us already suspected: The refined heart of India’s definitive concrete jungle is rooted in the raw heart of the jungle – where primal instinct, ancient superstition, and murderous faith rule unchecked.  

Gurgaon reveals the gentrification of a wild land through its wild humans. The Singhs, led by patriarch Kehri Singh [Tripathi], are the First Family of Gurgaon’s real estate boom. His son, Nikki [Akshay Oberoi], is the black sheep – a rich Haryanvi sociopath who harbours dreams of starting a gym empire. When the daughter, Preet [Ragini Khanna], returns from France after completing her Architecture degree, Kehri puts her at the forefront of his expansion plans, leading Nikki down a dark path. It is suggested that Preet is Kehri’s good-luck charm, and her arrival sets into motion a bottomless spiral. When a reckless Nikki loses a crore betting on a reckless Virender Sehwag century [he gets out for 99], he – along with reluctant brother Chintu [Ashish Verma] and best friend Rajvir [Arjun Fauzdar] – decides to kidnap Preet for a large ransom. Naturally, things do not go according to plan, and a bunch of characters – including a brutish kidnapper, a hapless musician, a shocked foreigner – get caught in the chaos. What follows is a journey into the bowels of human un-civilization, where females become disposable devices of prosperity, and blood becomes thinner than the water that washes it away. I remember watching Gurgaon in a cinema hall, and, most notably, admiring the moody and atmospheric cinematography. The film is a dichotomy of nocturnal shadows and pale colours, hijacked wealth, and abandoned squalor, with the Delhi-Gurgaon toll plaza featuring vividly in a narrative that seems to be stranded between limitless fields and cutting-edge bungalows. Vivek Shah is credited as the DOP, yet it must be mentioned that director Shanker Raman himself is a National Award-winning cinematographer. The result is a film in which the visual language plays a key role in the story of a new generation at once resisting and succumbing to the DNA of the old one. What defines the shock value of the film – unlike the wanton violence of long-form shows set in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar – is this setting: at the intersection of urban and rural, past and present, criminal and corporate, man and wild. Even today, the air changes a little once you pass the toll plaza into Gurgaon – or “Gurugram” – where industrial modernity is a weak ruse for tempered tradition.   The excellent ensemble cast of Gurgaon is worth examining. Subtitles on Netflix lend Tripathi’s mumbling rage an identity of its own, which was difficult to decipher back in 2017 despite the evocative sound design of the film. This was the actor’s golden period, with Newton, Anaarkali of Aarah, Gurgaon, Stree, and finally,  Mirzapur establishing him as the ultimate late bloomer in a film industry of sudden merit. Oberoi appears in every second middling web show these days, but his Nikki remains his finest performance by far. The roguish Haryanvi, cold stares and light eyes make for a brutal combination, turning Nikki into an eerie hybrid between Kendall Roy and Munna Tripathi. One of the biggest casualties of the streaming era not yet taking off at the time is the talented Ragini Khanna, who only has forgettable films like _Posham Pa_ and _Ghoomketu_ to her name since the muted success of Gurgaon. I can only imagine how many web offers she might have received if she had occupied the current casting ecosystem. It is never too late, but the Sasural Genda Phool star might first have to break free from her television roots to make good on all that initial promise.   I’ll say it again: Gurgaon, despite its dated sense of flashback, is a bonafide crime drama. It deserved more than scattered critical acclaim and throwbacks ahead of the director’s next film Love Hostel [releasing on 25 February on ZEE5]. Like NH10, it is a tale of two contrasting India[s] – except both of them are too inextricably connected to be at odds with one another. Perhaps time will be kinder to the film, unlike the characters in it, who seem to be stuck in a loop of an “Acche din” cautionary tale. Rarely has a nation’s sociocultural history been so subliminally woven into a contemporary moment of greed and gore. After all, Gurgaon was not built in a day. It emerged from the night. Rahul Desai is a film critic and programmer, who spends his spare time travelling to all the places from the movies he writes about. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.