What’s it like to be on a show that’s run by women, casts a woman as ‘hero’ and has men play characters not liked by women? Dahaad’s male trio gets in conversation with Sunday mid-day
Vijay Varma, Gulshan Devaiah and Sohum Shah
Devi Lal Singh, Kailash Parghi and Anand Swarnakar sit at three disparate points on the goodness barometer. The first, an honest police officer shunted to Mandawa for not accepting bribes; the second, a confused, ambitious, corrupt and mildly chauvinistic but willing-to-evolve sub-inspector. And the last, a mild-mannered Hindi professor with a sick mind and no moral compass. You are able to plot their place basis how they view and treat women against a variegated backdrop of patriarchy and caste oppression.
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The actors playing these men—Gulshan Devaiah, Sohum Shah and Vijay Varma—also found themselves guided and controlled by women. Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti are creators of Amazon Prime’s recent thriller, Dahaad. The pair is known to write male characters that women love, and female characters who speak their mind. Another woman, Ruchika Oberoi, joined Kagti as the show’s co-director.
Varma, who is rivetingly disturbing as a remorseless serial killer who traps and murders 29 women after promising them everlasting love much in the same way ‘Cyanide Mohan’, a primary school teacher from Karnataka did between 2004 and 2009, says the hardest part was to come on board with his character. “I have been raised by women, and have great respect and love for them,” says Varma, “My mom, Kanta, supported me and my choices when no one believed in me. She, my sister Shobha, and my three nieces are my biggest cheerleaders. I have also worked with female directors like Zoya, Reema [Kagti] and Nandita Das, who have shaped me as an actor. I had no idea how to orient myself with these [manipulative] feelings. Reema guided me. She explained that my character had deep issues with how his father had treated his mother, but somehow ends up adopting the same behaviour despite being scarred by his atrocities. I didn’t dwell much on it, and tried to disconnect. Anand also doesn’t let his feelings show, so, I was able to hide behind that character trait.”
He says that being on a set helmed by powerful women, who don’t quite care to preserve societal structures, helped him see that two realities exist in India—the woman who can take her own decisions, and those who cannot even if they desire.
Unlike Varma, Shah says he was able to find similarities between his own person and the character. “My journey is very similar to Parghi’s,” Shah admits. Like the newly married Rajasthani police officer, Shah also comes from the small town of Ganganagar. “I come from a conservative family. If the women in my home.. my sisters..even so much as stood on the entrance of our home, I’d be naturally tuned to ask them to step inside. This, despite that I was younger to them. Society isn’t favourable [to gender equality], and boys on the street would gawk at them. It’s only after my stay in Mumbai, meeting a variety of people, working with women and experiencing the birth of my own daughter, that I have become progressive. I now feel different although I still get livid at the very thought of someone touching my daughter!”
Devaiah, interestingly, was surprised when he was told that Devi Lal Singh encouraged his wife to keep a open mind about handing their teenage daughter’s freedom. He attributes this to stereotypes we harbour about small town residents. “We tend to paint them in a broad stroke, get judgmental. Devi Lal shatters this idea. He comes from a socio-economic background that probably didn’t allow him to be highly educated or exposed to contemporary ideas. But he is a good guy, doing the right thing. He also wants to do the right thing for his daughter,” the actor says. Like Shah, Devaiah feels that it’s because Devi Lal plays father to a teenage girl, that he is softer and wants to be a better man. “At home, Devi is a father, not a cop. If you look at Soham’s character, he carries the guilt of not being an upright man. He is not bad at heart but he is greedy. And that’s exactly why he struggles to accept that he is about to bring a child into the world.. a world where he too is not always doing the right thing.”
Devaiah, who in the series, urges his wife to be “modern” like his colleague and sub-inspector Anjali Bhaati (Sonakshi Sinha), points out that it’s not just the men who are flawed. Bhaati has a deeply problematic relationship with her mother (Jayati Bhatia) and her eagerness to see her married. Her backward class lineage is a corpse she carries. “She is obsessed with proving herself, which is a fault because it gives her a tunnel vision. She is disrespectful of her mother, takes advantage of the leeway her boss offers her. We [viewers] want her to win in the end of course, but we cannot deny that she goes around breaking the law. Caste and gender politics feature prominently here, but in the end, we are all just human beings trying to deal with situations,” he thinks.
The answer to the million dollar question—how is a timid, short-on-looks teacher able to lure dozens of women to abandon their families—lies in the glaring inequality of sexes that continues to permeate everyday life in much of India. Exhausted with the rejection that comes with not being able to pay dowry and overshooting marriageable age, they chase an impossible dream of finding selfless love. “Maybe, some people who watch the show will say, this is not good, let’s change this about ourselves,” Shah hopes. Varma had come away being more empathetic to the other sex. “For me, kindness is paramount. The story points at how this is lacking in some people. When a piece of art can instill empathy in the audience, that’s the best part. When I took on this role, I thought about how this story would serve us. That offered me motivation. Sometimes, you may be uncomfortable with the issue you are shining a light on, but it’s important to do it.”
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