Aar Ya Paar review: Underwhelming series misses its mark while also searching for It

There is a scene in Disney+Hotstar’s Aar Ya Paar, where a couple of police officers discuss the geopolitics of tribal people. “Ye tribal log puri duniya ko jungle mante hain,” one says, to which another responds, “Duniya ko jungle nai, Jungle ko apni puri duniya maante hain”. It’s a fairly simple exchange that effectively communicates two sides of a complicated debate. Unfortunately, it’s one of the few moments in this show that suggests it has intellect at par with its commitment to an age-old debate. Aar Ya Paar, created by the hit-and-miss Sidharth Sengupta, is a puzzling foray into India’s tribes, via some truly awful stereotyping, mildly interesting conflict and some extremely bizarre mis-en-scene. There is so much that’s awkward here, that a handful of decent performances struggle to balance the daft, almost offensive nature of all that might be, and is problematic.

Sarju, played by newcomer Aditya Rawal, is a warrior of the Degohaati (also the village) tribe located somewhere in middle India. Sarju and his tribe are gatherer-hunters still, but for some reason they continue to wear pre-historic clothing, hunt with bows and arrows and live lives cordoned off from civilisation, like it is a couple of centuries earlier. There are scant accounts of such tribes in India, in the present day context, but regardless of accuracy, this is a wretchedly romanticised portrait of a dying trope. Even Rajamouli’s imagination of the Bhils in RRR (set somewhere in 1920s) feels progressive in comparison. Moreover, Sarju is the most uninteresting, straight-faced protagonist whose reticence suggests brain damage rather than mystique or reluctant gladiatorial artifice.

Ashish Vidyarthi plays the quizzically named Reuben Bhattaa, chief of Bhattaa Mining, a predictably greedy mining company that discovers that a precious mineral can be mined from the area inhabited by Sarju’s tribe. This is a classic clash between worlds, between two diametrically opposing views, and yet it feels far too restrained and subdued for its own good. Dibyendu Bhattacharya is thrown into the mixer as a local, foul-mouthed contractor and so is Sumeet Vyas, as the slightly read and marginally erudite police officer offered a ringside view. Vyas is decent, and Bhattacharya, is well, excellent as always. As a small-time contractor of ugly tasks, he soars in an otherwise tepid mix of forced conflict, ungainly creative choices and a bizarre plotline.

Sarju encounters the city, almost becomes an archery prodigy before turning to a life of crime. The awful representation of tribal people notwithstanding, even by the modest standards of space accorded to the subject, Aar Ya Paar does no justice to the tribal people of India. If anything, it’s an affront to the imagination. Sengupta’s Undekhi had a similar angle of tribal women being lifted from the Sundarbans, but there the visceral nature of their retaliation, felt rooted in native folklore. Here it feels plastered-on, as an uncomfortable spin-off of a tribal story that simply does not know how to interact with urbanity, in its world or on the script. There is an attempt here to humanise characters – Bhattaa is dying by the way – but everything, from the effects to the acting feels, like an arrow without a target – oddly unspecific.

You have to feel for Rawal here, who really doesn’t have a guide to follow nor a culture to insert himself into. This points to a wider problem really, the question of empathetic portrayals as opposed to sympathetic ones. Rawal seems lost here for the most part, and his struggles show in the presence of actors who make even farcically mediocre material light up. But then, they clearly have the easier of the tasks here. You can tell when a show is struggling to get its tone and direction in place when a collision of ecosystems is pegged around the introduction of a woman (a potential love interest played here by Patralekha, who simply cannot catch a break) as a device that indicates both notoriety and schema. There were far greater questions here, that could have been asked with great deftness and propriety and yet Sengupta and co squander it at will.

It’s hard to summarise a show’s flaws when it feels to so summarily uneven and jagged that it doesn’t just progress, but dives down a well of increasingly poor creative choices. This series travels to Romania, Poland etc but where it falters first is in the fictional town of Jadalganj, where it is initially set. Dahan, another Hotstar show set on the margins of urban India, did well to firmly anchor itself in a native culture that has to both elude yet intrigue. Aar Ya Paar achieves none of it because the milieu feels insincere, not to mention, offensive at certain points. Ambition is a great virtue to have but naked ambition can get you into rooms and ideas that displace, both your sense of comfort and belonging. There are hints in this series of what this creative team is capable of – they have done it before. And that is what they should have maybe, stuck to.

Aar Ya Paar is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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