Bihar and Uttar Pradesh shown in OTT do not exist in real world

- Pankaj Tripathi who benefited the most from 'Mirzapur' was born in Gopalganj, Bihar. He has trained at the National School of Drama, Delhi.

There is a land in the northern region of India that is the center of the darkest darkness in the country. It may be one-tenth of the country, but its problems are more than its size. Here, most of the inhabitants have lost their morals, while the few that remain have lacked modesty. Most of the residents here are politicians, criminals or the police or their relatives. The rest of the teachers, traders, office workers are not counted here. No sentence here is complete without profanity. Women here are ready to be crushed or conspire themselves. There is no middle ground here. However, this is the same land where Gautama Buddha and Lord Mahavira walked sometime before the Saiks. Normal humans like us don't live here anymore.

This land of extremes is another world created by online streaming platforms. On the map you can say that the names of these lands are Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, but this is only a geographical identification. Because this society and culture, this language and art shown on the OTT platform is not reality.

Then how was this new society, this new world created?

The first series of Mirzapur, released on OTT in 2018, was named after the district in the neighborhood of Varanasi. The district is famous for carpets and rugs. Its world-renowned handloom products have received the Geographical Indication (GI) tag. That is, these products are the identity of this place, its uniqueness. But this fact remained aside.

In the first 20 minutes of the first episode of Mirzapur, body parts and pubic hair are mentioned, female characters are amused by gestures of swaying bodies, a man loses two fingers after a damaged country pistol backfires, betel nut-chewing teachers are seen casually kicking trash cans and Profanity is used indiscriminately.

Mirzapur was hit hard. When its second season aired in 2019, MP from this district Anupriya Patel (now Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry) expressed distaste for the negative portrayal of her constituency. But this series broke new ground and other creators were ready to wash their hands in the flowing Ganga.

Its lead artist Pankaj Tripathi, who benefited the most from Mirzapur, was born in Gopalganj, Bihar. He has trained at the National School of Drama, Delhi. Tripathi is an accomplished actor and recently released his film Lal Singh Chadha. When asked to assess the portrayal of his state on the OTT platform, his reply was that I have not seen any Bihar-centric series.

According to Tripathi, the portrayal of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh has always been negative. After all they are just like other states. Bihar's GDP may be low right now, but its emotional and intelligence index is high. About fifty percent of UPSC exam passers are from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. At one time caste conflict was at its peak here. People were protesting and hence these states were in the news. It left a negative impression on the outside world.

However, a glimpse of the real-life Tripathi is seen in Criminal Justice where he plays a lawyer from Bihar. According to Tripathi, filmmakers should exercise some restraint regarding the excesses shown on the OTT platform.

Born and educated in Lucknow, Ahana Kumara also faced such an approach. Kumar was told that I look too modern, too urban and too smart for a series based in Uttar Pradesh. Considering similar standards, was Manya Singh of Uttar Pradesh right during Miss India 2021 runner-up? And wasn't the Lucknow-educated Karidhal Srivastava, Deputy Operations Director of India's Mangalyaan Mission, skilled?

It is believed that OTT platforms are an important medium for freedom of expression that does not involve censorship. But like other mediums of art it too has been prone to hits and flops. A series like Panchayat released in 2020, in which an engineering graduate reluctantly accepts to work as a panchayat in Uttar Pradesh, is an exception.

The Uttar Pradesh and Bihar depicted in the OTT is mostly eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Hence the belief that all people living in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar speak such a language is overblown.

A single filmmaker, Lucknow's most popular director, Muzaffar Ali, made a film based on three different stories based on the same locality. Ali's first film Gaman (1978) depicts the pain of a migrant from Uttar Pradesh struggling to settle in Mumbai. After that, in 1981, there is a Tawaif of Lucknow in Umrao Jan. Five years later, Anjuman, which was not released in theatres, has the creator talking about the plight of Lucknow's famous chikankari embroidery artists.

Amit Sial who presented Jamtara in 2020 on OTT is from Kanpur. Kanpur was once famous as the Manchester of the East. They say crime and sex attract everyone. I don't know why we are stuck in it. Something new should have been done especially for OTT. But I think we missed a big opportunity. A producer or director will look for a writer who writes a crime story well but they will not look for a writer who writes a non-crime story well.

Born in Uttar Pradesh, Sial knows his people well. Hence, when he was cast as Devender Mishra in the Hindi series Inside Age (2017), he requested the makers to show his character in Kanpur instead of western Uttar Pradesh. Once they agree, Mishra thrives in the character, freely expressing the quirks, mannerisms, frustrations and anger he experienced growing up.

However, not all crime stories in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are fictional. Raktanchal (2020) revolves around the mafias of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar based on realistic stories. This geography is unique. But what names are used for it in OTT?

For instance, Sitapur: City of Gangsters is a crime story that can take place anywhere. But the name of Sitapur was used in the title to suggest to the audience that the film will depict the culture of North India.

Anil Rastogi is a retired scientist from the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow and is also a respected theater and TV artist. He acted in Ashram web series. Regarding Sitapur, he opined that he couldn't understand why the film featured so much violence, sex and bad dialogues because it didn't make any difference to the story. I even refused to speak some dialogues. For some reason the series was adapted into a film and the vulgar dialogues were removed. This is why it can be said that a story can be told without exaggeration. Rastogi admits that it was because of such excesses that he became extremely upset while watching his own work.

Retired from the state power department, Gopal Sinha is also an active theater artist. He has acted in over 70 plays but has spent most of his time working on stage lighting. Sinha opined that though there are excellent actors in Lucknow, web series creators have been choosing only a few. Creators only choose actors who have no option to refuse the work assigned to them. And this is why one's face is seen radiating misunderstanding about the state. The makers select such faces and shoot in Uttar Pradesh so that they can benefit from concessions from the state.

At the 68th National Film Awards in October 2022, Uttar Pradesh was awarded the most film-friendly state. But the properly formulated film policy of the state has not made any difference to its image.

Movies and serials have been made about the Eastern Uttar Pradesh mafia but why no film is made on the greatest Urdu poet of all time Raghupathi Sahai aka Firak Gorakhpuri? They also belong to the same area whose crime stories are featured in the web series. Why not a series on ancient Nalanda where the world's first residential international university was built in 427 CE. Today's Bihar was then known as Magadha. OTT is an excellent medium for such stories.

Every now and then, streaming platforms feature topics worthy of praise. In 2021, Lucknow's Munzeer Naqvi made the film Sehar, which dealt with the topic of making Urdu a villain. Central Uttar Pradesh (then Awadh) is still an area where the Hindi language spoken is a mixture of Hindi and Urdu. It also has splashes of Persian and Arabic. The hero of Naqvi's film is a Kashmiri Pandit professor who teaches Urdu in a college in Lucknow. This character is played by Pankaj Kapoor. A struggle begins when his department is closed.

Sehar made it to several film festivals, including the Asian Film Festival at Barcelona and the Dhaka International Film Festival, but could not be released theatrically due to censors.

No reason has been found for it but it seems that in today's age Urdu is not considered as the national language at all.

Although Naqvi's film will now be available on streaming platforms, there is uncertainty about the response it will receive as it lacks the violence, sex and vulgarity expected from an Uttar Pradesh film.

Naqvi states that some states have made an impression without thinking. North India is depicted as a lawless state as if it were a battlefield. How long will this land of Rama be shown as Lanka of Ravana? These states at the heart of India need an answer.