On Hathi Ram Chaudhary from Paatal Lok Season 2
His adherence to do what's right in the face of internal, external pressures makes us root for him, yet the very system that binds him gives him power to go after 'bad' guys... conditions attached.
Around the middle of Episode 4 in Season 2 of Paatal Lok (streaming on Amazon Prime), Delhi cop Hathi Ram Chaudhary (essayed by Jaideep Ahlawat) tells his superior in rank, but a partner in (solving) crime, ACP Imran Ansari (Ishwak Singh), to not give two hoots about what he or anyone else thinks about his relationship. The moment is but a minor sidestep in the larger story, yet a significant one, for it showcases a stunning side to Hathi Ram Chaudhary, a Haryanvi Jat who is navigating the system and its frustrations, and on the other, his stubborn adherence to follow his principles.
And yet between these two ends lie many significant pitfalls and moments that have no easy answers, but just a man trying to manage work-life balance, where the needs of a family increase with time, and many dilemmas – moral, ethical, financial, all cast within a patriarchal framework – have to be faced and answered to the best of the abilities of Paatal Lok inhabitants.
Even as Hathi Ram Chaudhary solidifies his bond with Imran Ansari with this gesture of acceptance, it made me ask a question: What if Hathi Ram’s son had come to him, or he had found out like he did about Ansari? I guess he would’ve beaten the shit out of his boy and then maybe gone and drunk a bottle or two more and the next day grudgingly accept and move on to do his duty. This guesswork on my part is unfair to a character as richly owned by Jaideep Ahlawat as there could’ve been. Hathi Ram Chaudhary’s humanness in all its dazzling colours had me invoking Rust Cohle from True Detective Season 1, where, one out of many of his famous lines, “The world needs bad men. To keep the other bad men from the door” would fit for Hathi Ram Chaudhary too.
Where Hathi Ram Chaudhary drops his guard, and rightly so because where wouldn’t you be your true self except at your home, is in his heated exchanges with his wife Renu Chaudhary (Gul Panag). Gul Panag has brought her own fierceness to the show, and her invocations, frustrations and acceptance of her husband’s frustrations, anger and mental, physical scars is but one of the many endearing aspects about the show.
One moment from Season 2, I had to pause as my throat had welled up, was when she has this blink-and-miss-scene where they, as parents, along with her brother, go to surprise their son on his birthday at his college hostel and he has his own plans with his friends so Hathi Ram Chaudhary says let him go and she has this quiet, yet, profoundly sad silence, and she just acts it out with her face. Similarly, in one of the later episodes where she soothes and bonds with a boy whose mother is no more and she says, “Teri mummy kahin nahin gayi hai, yahin hai, aur tujhe dekh rahi hai… ki Guddu thik se khaana khata hai ki nahin, aunty ko pareshan toh nahin kar raha. Mummy aisi hi hoti hai. Baccha dur ja sakta hai, par mummy hamesha uske pass rehti hai.” Ah, women as wives and mothers, so much strength to endure.
And Hathi Ram Chaudhary, the protagonist of the show endures plenty too. He’s the one who’s unspooling the complex spool, and winning hearts by standing defiantly against the very system that says one thing and does another, that has a limit when it comes to exposing the corrupt, and in the very next moment breaking hearts by wielding power by virtue of his position as ‘khaki vardi waala’ on the poor by slapping them in markets and beating them in custody. All this shows perfectly that there is no perfection when it comes to Paatal Lok, the very Lok which you and I are living in, for truth very much remains stranger and more implausible than fiction.
One more bit that I thought would also make a good spin-off is Hathi Ram Chaudhary in front of a therapist. He needs to see one, for in more ways than one, and we could have our own desi twist to The Sopranos.
All in all, credit to the cast and writers Sudip Sharma, Abhsihek Banerjee, Rahul Kanojia, Tamal Sen, director Avinash Arun Dhaware, and to the technical, non-technical people associated with the show.
P.S: My favourite dialogue from the season:
‘Hum gully cricket ke launde hain Chaudhary. Aur yahan World Cup chal raha hai.’