Queen and people as chess pieces

A still from Maharani Season 2 featuring Huma Qureshi, Sohum Shah

Robin Wright (Clare Underwood), while promoting the final/sixth season of the psychopathic, political show House of Cards (HoC), told me that when the iconic series had first dropped in 2013, the cast got invited to the Democratic Party's national convention dinner.

Wright was seated next to a "Southern senator", who kept telling her about how HoC was "so real, so accurate." How accurate, she asked. He said, "99 per cent!" What's the one per cent not accurate, she asked. She thought "he was going to say, people don't really murder, kill [like that]… He said, ‘You'll never be able to pass the Education Bill that fast!'"

HoC worked with audiences in general because it offered a sneak peek into how amoral/wider politics works, since we consume politicians, only through excessively filtered news. Actual shenanigans take place in such hallowed, rarefied spaces, that nobody has a clue what goes on behind those narrow, domestic walls.

Fiction helps to join the dots. Which was also the case with The West Wing (1999), while that was more the HoC's idealistic opposite. Although not set in the present, the series Maharani (2021) was a finely detailed, relatable refresher course for 1990s Bihar, roughly set around two pillars of the state's politics, for much over three decades.

Sohum Shah (as Bheema Bharti), plays a version of Lalu Prasad Yadav; likewise, Amit Sial (as Navin Kumar), channels the current CM, Nitish Kumar. Call them ‘frenemies' or ‘brothers from other mothers', if you like.

Amit Sial

Between them is Maharani (Huma Qureshi as Rani Bharti), somewhat based on Rabri Devi, Lalu's illiterate housewife, who takes over as state CM, while the show traverses through the big events, through the decade - from Ranvir Sena-Maoist class/caste war, down to the infamous fodder scam.

Maharani's second season - that recently dropped on Sony LIV; created by Subhash Kapoor, directed by Ravindra Gautam (guessing a Bihari; going by two first names) - feels too stretched, yes; with a long bulge over 10 episodes (averaging 40 minutes each), before the series switches genre.

Chiefly, because it isn't as much a clever interspersing/interpretation of facts, as it is altogether a fictional, counter-factual history of the '90s, this time around. The show is still Maharani, centred on the queen - the most powerful piece in chess (it's not the king) - while Rabri, in reality, became irrelevant after a point. What if she hadn't?

This isn't to say you don't find enough relatable remnants of contemporary/'90s desi politics that redefined India's history, even if the larger context is missing. Whether that be the Rath Yatra (and deaths along the way), or the Mandal Commission Report (for job reservations; and jubilation plus protests that followed).

The latter we know was a dusty file pulled out by Lalu to assist Prime Minister V P Singh in a battle with his deputy (Devi Lal) at the time. Both Rath Yatra and ‘Mandal politics' are usually deemed by observers as "masterstroke".

That's a reason I dislike discussing personality-based politics, especially with those supposedly in the know; quite often, political journalists.

It sounds like low-level gossip, involving egos, demographic equations, and megalomaniacs, with a fondness to exterminate/screw people over - rather than an engagement with anything innately real/relevant to lives they're there for. In no other profession are the openly lying, unscrupulous folk lauded so much.

Even simple voting morphs into something muscular, rather than a means to public service. Election results become pure arithmetic to grab power; trading legislators like horses. Rate cards show up. Throw money, or instill fear - any government can fall. We know too much.

I suspect the future generation, with adequate advancement in technology, will be forced to relook at democracy itself, 20th Century's most popular political idea - when it's gamed to work for no one, but those with the penchant to corner huge public resources and money from tax-payers.

It's not only the rich who pay taxes. Everybody does. Education would be a poor investment for politicians to carry on the way they traditionally have. Health is hardly a priority.

What's the point of politics, if it's merely to hold on to power, somehow? You sense that cynicism among those in public life. As you do in films/series depicting it. Everybody is a Chanakya. But Chanakya himself operated from Bihar. As do everyone in Maharani. Who should you even root for?

Bheema says, "Kursi ko paana jitna mushkil, usko chhorna utna hi mushkil (It's as difficult to grab power, as it is to leave it)." His estranged wife (Rani) manipulates enough to stay there.

Navin Kumar (the dude-like Amit Sial) can't even compare to the Machiavellian moves of the actual Nitish Kumar, who's remained CM in Bihar for 17 years, as we speak, sworn-in eight separate times, forming government with every possible coalition, depending on the direction of the wind. Bihar is decidedly still the poorest among all big Indian states.

In Maharani 2, the messianic Navin literally beats up ‘berozgaari' (unemployment), ‘gunda raaj' (lawlessness), ‘bhrashtachar' (corruption), dressed like a movie-star, in a television commercial, before elections. This is politics as showbiz/entertainment. It doesn't even seem like a parody, if you observe politician-characters around you, outside of this show. Which is what makes it so depressing, but true.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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