Show that warrants full applause

Herersquos the thing about books and moviesseries based on themmdashtherersquos inevitably a debate at any rate a discussion on how one was better than the otherOften enough itrsquos the book that wins among readers whorsquove participated more on the imagination with the written word as wellItrsquos only fair then that soon as I finish watching the sevenpart first season of Black Warrant authentically created by Vikramaditya Motwane masterfully scripted by Satyanshu SinghmdashI instantly speedread the book of the same name by Sunil Gupta Sunetra Choudhury that the Netflix series is based onNever mind what I make of the inevitable comparison I call up Choudhury instead to ask what she thinks of the show visagravevis her own nonfictionjournalistic book ldquoIrsquod argue the series is betterrdquo Choudhury saysThis is the rarest thing to hearBlack Warrant essentially means death warrant Which lays out the precise timeprocedure to execute a convictrsquos death sentenceDirector Vikramaditya Motwane left and journalist Sunetra ChoudhuryThe bookseries is based on the life of one Sunil Gupta coauthor and protagonist who 1981 onwards spent 35 years as jailer within the 200acre campus of Tihar in Delhi that is Asiarsquos largest prisonThe first thing you learn from Guptarsquos life is how professional jailers mostly untrained permanently posted in the same prison hold neither the rankrespect of police officersNor do they comfortably belong to the civilian world that actively looks down upon them For its proximity to the powercentre and Indiarsquos newsmedia shops Tihar particularly gets bad press perhaps for good reasons tooIf anything ldquonumberdaarsrdquo run the damn show within Tihar That is longserving prisoners themselves who get appointed as bouncers by the state upon their display of good behaviour such as Chiranjit Dhumi in Black WarrantBetween numberdaars both hardened and highprofile criminalsundertrials and bureaucratic hierarchies all of rsquoem laced with corruptionmdashitrsquos almost a miracle if someone like Gupta can get away with his life let alone izzatdignity intact Gupta is grappling like everyone elseMemoirs especially in India and biopics all the more are essentially exercises in personal exaggerationsChoudhury a journalist who moved from television to print good for her tells me ldquoTake any IPS officerrsquos memoirmdashitrsquos all about lsquoI did this I did thatrsquo simply talking themselves up without once surveying the serious greys betweenrdquoWith Gupta Choudhury found an ldquoEverymanrdquo Upon some cajoling he was willing to admit to Choudhury in the book that he owed his very appointment in the jail to the lsquoBikini Killerrsquo Charles Sobhraj the ldquoSuper IGrdquo lodged in Tihar thenThis honesty gave her the neutral lens to view all that Gupta witnessed around himNonfiction even while anecdotal states facts that you canrsquot touch or torture Fiction fleshes out moments fully bringing characters to life especially if on screen Each medium serves its unique purpose Truth doubtlessly elevates fictionBlack Warrant as a series goes deeper into gangwarsmdashTyagi Haddi Sardarsmdashin Tihar also delving into a prisonaccountantrsquos world Rajendra Gupta caught in a peculiarly Kafkaesque messThere are three strong jailer parts alongside the leadmdashin particular Rahul Bhat as deputy superintendent Rajesh Tomar whorsquos downright brilliant None of which exists in the 2019 bookThey wouldrsquove emerged from further conversations between Gupta and the showrsquos writers Choudhury tells me ldquoI was more interested in the psyche of the jailer My previous book Behind Bars 2017 is wholly an account from inmatesrsquo perspectivesrdquoThe jail of course is as much a location as an old subgenre in films itself even in India from the classics V Shantaramrsquos Do Aankhen Barah Haath to the contemporary Vetrimaaranrsquos Vada Chennai with a lot of BS along the way tooWhat if I told you that the most entertaining yet frighteningly realist desi prisonflick Irsquove seen lately is UT69 2023 starring businessman Raj Kundra in the lead playing himself as an inmate at Mumbairsquos Arthur Road Jail Well yoursquoll just have to watch it to believe meMotwanersquos Black Warrant partpersonal parthistory is like none of the above It actually reveals a filmmaker so on top of his game having a ball like nobody else in Bombay I knowmdashproducing content regardless of genreform seriesmoviesIn this case touching upon individual lives zooming out to wellknown casesnames Sobhraj RangaBilla Maqbool Bhathellip The series stops at 1984If the book is anything to go by the second season could expand towards even betterknown public figures associated with Tihar Kiran Bedi Rajan Pillai Subrata Roy Anna Hazare Arvind Kejriwal Afzal Guru Manu Sharma Jessica Lal casehellip Who knows The possibilities are limitlessAt the centre of this is a deliberately puny unremarkablelooking Zahan Kapoor grandson of the great Shashi Kapoor as Sunil Gupta the jailer As per the book Gupta is six feet tall weighing 56 kilosI had to ask Choudhury since shersquos spent so much time with the OG Sunil if Zahan to her felt anything like her protagonistShe says ldquoWhen we watched the show together in Delhi Sunil did tell me lsquoWell I wasnrsquot that weak eitherrsquo Zahan does look differentldquoBut onscreen he just becomes Sunil with the West Delhi accent thatrsquos so spoton as he goes lsquoMera naam Sunil Guptarsquordquo True So trueMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper