Brilliance in the ‘Belgium of Bihar’!

A still from the Amazon Prime Video series Dupahiya. Pic/Amazon mgm studios

To let you in on a fact about Bihar - which may well be true for other Indian states - its villages, presently, are vastly better than its towns, in terms of general quality of life, safety included.

This is certainly true for my ancestral village, Bangaon, in north Bihar, compared to its closest district, Saharsa, and even bigger cities around.

Or, for that matter the fictional village, Dhadakpur - in the adorably subtle, Amazon Prime Video comedy series, Dupahiya.

Which is where the school principal, Banwari Jha (Gajraj Rao), and family live, and love. If their village was for real - it wouldn't be far from Bangaon, in the Mithila region, bordering Nepal and Bengal.

Dhadakpur is the only "crime-free village" in India. Earning it the epithet, ‘Belgium of Bihar'! This is ironic.

Given that almost all of popular entertainment/content (movies/series), set in UP-Bihar, tend to be ‘litti westerns' - likewise, surveying guns, gang-wars, cops, and politicians - with the east of India permanently institutionalised as its Wild West.

Starting from the greatest, Anurag Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), to its hand-me-downs Mirzapur, Jamtara, Khakee, Maharani… Or Prakash Jha's Gangaajal (2003), Apaharan (2005), before that.

Panchayat (2020), placed in the fictional village, Phulera, probably in Ballia district of north-eastern UP, remains the much loved, notable exception. Only, that by the time you get to the final episode of Panchayat's third season (2024), lathis and dunalis (double-barrel rifles) do make their sufficient appearance, aimed at political rivals, in the open fields.

Even in the fictional sense then, Dhadakpur (of Dupahiya) has a reputation to protect - for the fact that no crime has been reported in this hamlet of 100 homes, over 24 years plus. Do I know of any such village?

I have visited Shani Shingnapur, off Ahmednagar, in Maharashtra, once. Which (I hope still) takes pride in their shops/homes/establishments bearing no locks on their doors. In fact, no doors at all; only frames, to ensure stray animals don't step in. Thievery/robbery being out of the question.

For Dupahiya's creators-writers Avinash Dwivedi and Chirag Garg, the point of a zero-crime village was to up the stakes, when a crime (however ordinary) does take place in their story.

Avinash says, "It's while we were researching, thereafter, that we came across an article about a DCP (police official) in Bihar, mentioning a village, where no FIRs had ever been filed."

Chirag adds, "This can happen among tribal populations, where crime-related issues tend to get solved within [the community]."

(Clockwise from top left) Salona Bains Joshi, Shubh Shivdasani, Chirag Garg and Avinash Dwivedi

Besides Chirag (from Alwar, Rajasthan) and Avinash (from Gorakhpur, UP), I spoke to the creator-producer-showrunners of Dupahiya, i.e. Shubh Shivdasani and Salona Bains Joshi. None of whom are from Bihar.

As for practically everyone from the principal cast: Gajraj is from Rajasthan. Lapataa Ladies' lead Sparsh Shrivastava, absolutely sensational as Gajraj's son, Bhugol Jha, is also from Rajasthan.

Shivani Raghuvanshi (from Delhi) plays the daughter. Yashpal Sharma (Hissar, Haryana) is the cop. Renuka Shahane (Mumbai) is Dhadakpur's headwoman…

If anything, Renuka, who's lovely as always, I felt, hardly gets the local twang bang-on. But then again, if one were to go authentic - Dupahiya should've ideally been in the Maithili language.

Unsure how many would instantly watch it. I noticed the common, local word ‘thetthar' for thick-skinned on the screen. The translation read, coward. So be it.

As creator Shubh puts it, "We wished to get the milieu [of such an imagined village] right; without getting too specific, and while remaining accessible to a pan-Indian audience."

The brief in their heads was the OTT content-category, Young Adult. It's not that Gen Z only live in cities. Almost 70 per cent of India lives in villages. Barely any to be seen on the mainstream screen.

Hence, remarkable, how Dupahiya beautifully/entertainingly captures the wider - but more specifically the wedding - culture of rural Bihar, including its by-lanes (shot around Orccha in Madhya Pradesh).

What with the bus-load of baraatis, the nagin plus launda dance. Down to the motorcycle (‘dupahiya'), for top dowry - that gets stolen.

That's the script's perfect MacGuffin. As in, the object/event that triggers the comic-thriller plot, keeping it in motion, while the story gently surveys the lives of others, going about their day, where it feels like little happens, but a lot does.

I first caught Dupahiya casually, as an inoffensive, warm, comfort watch, that we so often seek for weekend TV, without much registering in our heads. The last two-three episodes were, however, excellent!

Which is when I watched it all over again, simply to observe its delicate take on life, love, pain-points, such as India's ‘pigmentation' (light/dark skin) problem. Even dowry that, in a crime-free village, is obviously not even perceived as wrong.

My favourite takeaway/truth-bomb from the show is when a young girl makes a distinction between urban and rural life, as told to her by the mother (Renuka): "Happiness and sorrow are both yours alone, in a city.
Whereas, in a village, they get shared equally, among all."

The flip-side of this, as the female lead (Shivani) explains, in a later episode, for why life in the ‘dehaat' doesn't suit her: "Here, for anything you do or don't [the refrain is], ‘Chaar log kya kahenga? (What'll people say?)'. In the city, those four people say nothing!" Enough said.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.