This is in the land of the absurd. Where an MLA can have the police force of the town of Moba, somewhere in Madhya Pradesh, looking for two jackfruits stolen from his garden.  Kathal (Netflix), directed by Yashowardhan Mishra, recreates the messy small town ambience for a comedy this time, instead of the usual violent gangster antics.
Inspector Mahima Basor (Sanya Malhotra) is annoyed, are we going to be looking into complaints of vegetable thefts now, she asks her superior and is told to just follow orders. For the MLA (Vijay Raaz) pushing the cops, finding the jackfruits is of prime importance for reasons of political advancement. And they are not common, garden variety jackfruits, they are of the imported Hong variety, that does not have tough fibre, he explains at one point; he rightly wants to know that if an MLA’s garden is not safe from theft, what must the common citizen be going through?
Mahima and her three deputies start hunting for the jackfruits in earnest. Like Anjali in Dahaad last week, Mahima belongs to a lower caste, which holds up her romance with her upper caste junior, Saurabh (Anant V. Joshi). It also means the MLA won’t let her step on his carpet and demands that it be sprinkled with Gangajal afterwards.
All these years film makers ignored caste– characters were not even given surnames–now caste has become a significant issue, even in a lighthearted film like this. This casual denigration of the lower castes is more disturbing, because it is meekly accepted. At least in Dahaad, a casteist goon is reprimanded.
The daughter of the MLA ‘s gardener goes missing and nobody cares about her, when jackfruits are more important than women.
Snapping at Mahima’s heels is an overeager reporter (Rajpal Yadav in a weird get up). When Mahima rushes about doing her work with all seriousness, a male cop comments that she should have been a fashion model. She quips, “I was fond of breaking bones, since childhood.”
The film (produced by the companies of Ektaa Kapoor and Guneet Monga) that starts out as a satire on misuse of power and the undermining of the police by politicians, turns serious later, without exactly improving on the plot. It’s a pity because Sanya Malhotra has worked hard to convert into a small town cop. Mahima lives alone and probably slogged her way up the ladder to the rank of inspector.
If the film retains its tinge of humour, it’s not because of laboured sequences like a vegetable throwing fight, but to Ashok Mishra’s brilliant colloquial dialogue to which English subtitles simply cannot do justice.
Kathal
Directed by Yashowardhan Mishra
Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Vijay Raaz, Neha Saraf, Rajpal Yadav and others
On Netflix
