Capital show

Although it’s difficult to imagine anybody wanting this dubious distinction for the city they live in, Delhi really has all the ingredients a crime novelist can possibly demand. It has the sprawl of a 21st-century megapolis, with enough nooks and crannies for sleuths — and their targets — to trawl through. It has drugs aplenty, from Chhattarpur’s ecstasy-fuelled parties to the meth labs of nearby Gurugram and the skank weed of Nizamuddin. It has gang violence, too, most notably towards the east. Not surprisingly, among those with an office in a central Delhi building for newspapers and journals is a weekly called Abhi Tak Crime Times .

Globally, though, Delhi’s status as an “unsafe city”, especially for women, was underlined after the events of December 16, 2012 — the night a physiotherapy intern (whom sections of the press dubbed Nirbhaya) was raped by six people aboard a moving bus. She died a couple of weeks and several surgeries later. The brazenness of the crime, coupled with the details of the gruesome violence inflicted on her, set in motion a series of protests by activists, students and the public at large.

Rookie meets veteran

The first season of Netflix India’s new anthology show Delhi Crime , follows this extremely volatile phase in Delhi’s history, through a clever mixture of reportage and fictionalisation (the character based on Nirbhaya is called Deepika, for instance). Directed by Richie Mehta, and starring Shefali Shah, Rasika Duggal, Rajesh Tailang and Adil Hussain among others, Delhi Crime is a classic police procedural, with enough stylistic and writerly flourishes that set it apart from the pack.

We follow deputy commissioner of police Vartika Chaturvedi (Shah), the lead investigator on the case, as she fights the clock, a spineless political class, and the rage of a public that’s had enough. Aiding Chaturvedi are the experienced and efficient inspector Bhupendra Singh (Tailang) and rookie Neeti Singh (Duggal), who is wide-eyed but also possesses a certain steel that the DCP notices immediately.

Ahead of the show’s premiere last week, Duggal told BL ink in Delhi, “My character Neeti Singh is a combination of some officers Richie interviewed, who had worked on the case. So while I didn’t actually meet them, I read a lot of interview transcripts, and a long article about the case.” The scene in which we first see Neeti is a delightful one, where she meets DCP Chaturvedi and tries hard to rein in her hero worship for the older celebrated cop. Chaturvedi gives her a few quick pointers on intimidating drivers at a police barricade; the next thing we know, Neeti has apprehended an ivory smuggler on the run with a loot worth lakhs of rupees stashed away in the boot of the vehicle. It’s a classic cop movie theme — the rookie proving herself in the eyes of the veteran — and Duggal’s compelling mixture of vulnerability and no-nonsense sternness highlights this beautifully.

Making her mark: Neeti Singh apprehends an ivory smuggler with loot worth lakhs of rupees stashed away in the boot of the vehicle; it’s a classic cop movie trope — the rookie proving herself in the eyes of the veteran

Equally compelling is Tailang’s character. Bhupendra has a lot in common with a certain kind of male, middle-aged detective in modern-day crime fiction — think inspector Wallander from the Swedish crime series — who’s really, really good at his job, but frustratingly middling in almost everything else. With Bhupendra, the middling part is however a matter of perception, and judgement by his peers and superiors. He lives in a middle-class home and is suffering from a long-standing back injury. He is perpetually sleep-deprived, receives little by way of validation from his superiors (except Chaturvedi, who trusts him) and, yet, turns up every single day for the job with renewed enthusiasm and a pragmatism that feels hard-earned.

Tailang told us: “ Yahaan pe Bhupendra ko lagta hai, ‘I’m in control’. (Bhupendra thinks he is in control here)”. This, he said, was the world the inspector could take charge of, despite his many problems. “With all these worries in his life — his health, his daughter’s wedding and so on — at least his job is one realm where Bhupendra feels he can handle anything that comes his way,” Tailang added in Hindi. The actor also pointed out that Bhupendra had been in tough posts all his life — including that of an encounter specialist (in one of the first scenes of the show, we see him negotiating a tricky encounter-like situation) which had toughened him up.

The personal vs professional intersection happens to Neeti in a telling way, too, as her budding romance with an army man deteriorates steadily through the course of the show. Chaturvedi forbids her to talk about the investigation, so when her boyfriend asks her about it, she flatly refuses to discuss it, saying, “If you had been in a military operation, I wouldn’t have even asked you about it.” Duggal said: “I think even as this is happening to Neeti, she isn’t fully conscious of the divide between them — and as an actor, things shouldn’t be absolutely crystal clear from the beginning, too, because that’s not how people feel in real life. In real life, you realise a lot of things gradually, and sometimes retrospectively. And as the show progresses, she spends more time with Deepika and her family, so that becomes her primary responsibility, over everything else in her life”.

Caffeine blues

As brilliant as Tailang and Duggal are in their respective roles, it is Shah’s performance as DCP Chaturvedi that you will keep returning to, days and weeks after the final episode is done. As if Chaturvedi’s struggles with bureaucracy, political chess games and the near-comical ineptness of some of her colleagues were not enough, she also has to deal with her sensitive and opinionated teenaged daughter Chandni (Yashaswini Dayama from Made in Heaven and Dear Zindagi ), who has just been accepted by a Canadian college for undergraduate studies, and cannot wait to escape Delhi. The reasons are obvious — we see her being leered at on the Metro, strangers brushing past her. When her mother insists that the city is improving and that enough people (like herself) are working to make things better, Chandni retorts, “So you’d be okay with me roaming around at night by myself?”

Chaturvedi’s response is an offer to take her daughter on a guided trip across town, to show her how the status quo is changing. It is a subtle emotion, certainly going beyond the understandable but unidimensional generational divide. There is more than a bit of professional pride involved; she tells Chandni, “Give me some time to persuade you. Have you ever known your mother to fail at anything?” Speaking to us, Shah clarified, “It’s not just about the fear of a parent. It’s the fear of someone who takes a lot of pride in not just her own work, but also the work of everyone alongside her. She’s someone who genuinely believes that everyone who works with her is trying to make the city a better place. And even more than pride, she is very confident that she does her job well. So her reaction to Chandni comes from that place”.

Chaturvedi is also an expert at man-management, getting the best out of her colleagues, sometimes employing a stentorian leadership style and, at other times, bringing out a softer, even strategic demeanour. Like the coffee scene, which, for this writer, was one of the highlights of the season. Chaturvedi offers the overworked Bhupendra her own stash of high-quality coffee, which he gratefully accepts, even though he’s the kind of person for whom all coffee tastes alike. She then uses that fact about him in a different conversation, with a different, more obviously well-heeled cop who’s more interested in bodybuilding than his duties, claiming that the coffee wasn’t actually that good — but “good enough for Bhupendra”. She’s lying, because she does not feel this cop, who’s slacking off in the middle of the investigation, deserves the coffee; she then proceeds to nudge him into staying at the police station a little while longer.

Director Mehta, however, didn’t initially see the scene as an example of man-management. “Or at least I didn’t view it that way. For me it was two overworked people sharing a coffee in the middle of the night, just sharing a moment. And then, when the work bit comes in, she’s like, ‘Okay, I have to keep the machine moving, the wheels turning’, so it becomes like that (man-management),” he said.

Sketched in detail: Even characters who don’t really get that much screen time are well thought out, which bodes well for the show

Deft touches such as this one are among the show’s strengths. It is also thoughtfully shot, with the cameras employing just the right amount of claustrophobia at crucial moments, backed up by some lovely, expansive shots, like the sequence where one of the suspects is caught in a watery chase across a river. And even characters who don’t really get that much screen time — such as Hussain playing the police commissioner — are well thought out, which bodes well for the series. Delhi Crime is, however, an anthology show, which means that every season will have a new story, a new set of characters. Therefore, there’s only so much gain you can take forward into future instalments. For now, however, Netflix India has a winner on its hands.

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based freelance writer