I may be wrong, but MX Player is perceived as a platform for casual viewing. It was only by chance that I switched on to this series featuring unknown co-directors Prem Mistry and Abhishek Yadav (take a bow) and a cast of relatively unknown talent.
I had decided to watch one episode at the most… I finally watched every single episode, wall to wall, and came away enormously impressed by the writing which allows not only the three protagonists, the Lafangeys (why this tawdry title, it makes the employment-challenged leads sound like wastrels from a Guddu Dhanoa action film) to breathe and grow, but also the people who populate their thirsty lives.
To cite an example, the household Sonu (Ranjan Raj) is someone so relatable he feels like a member of our household. Appreciably, Sonu’s character is not emblematized to accentuate the democratic spirit. He is organically a part of Kamlesh and his father’s family, almost the maternal presence missing in their household.
Or take Rohan (Gagan Arora)’s elder brother, a man who, like Pratik Gandhi in the wonderful Do Aur Do Pyar, feels he has somewhere missed the bus, or even more interestingly, Rohan’s Bhabhi, so calm, reasonable, trying to keep the family together… All these are characters so vivid and obtainable, that they feel like people we have met. And met quite recently.
Kamlesh played with a winking gusto by Harsh Beniwal, wants to be an actor. But he has very limited talent: this, he comes to know when an adoring junior with genuine talent shows up. Kamlesh’s journey is potholed, humiliating, humbling and bumpy: who said life for a wannabe Salman is easy?
If Harsh Beniwal is as convincing as Kamlesh, it is in all likelihood because the actor has faced many of the character’s rejections.
Gagan Arora as Rohan, my favourite of the three… er, Lafangaze, is again convincing as a love-smitten transit-Romeo. I have seen Gagan in some secondary roles. Here he comes into his own as a young man whose life is defined by his love for the pretty Ishita (Barkha Singh, who plays Pankaj Tripathi’s assistant in the brilliant Criminal Justice 4).
What happens when love fades on one side only, what happens on the other side? Gagan Arora as the jilted, stranded loverboy is brilliant: vulnerable, pitiable, solidly malleable. He is a revelation. That he gets some of the best lines and scenes (don’t forget to thank the writers Abhishek Yadav, and Ankit Yadav) works to Gagan’s advantage.
The weakest of the three plots is the one featuring the rise and fall of Chaitanya (Anud Singh Dhaka). His story, in spite of its life-defining moments, comes across more as Agneepath than Dil Chahta Hai. Chaitanya’s outbursts about why he sold his soul to the devil sound echoic in a series where almost every line feels organic.
More interesting than Chaitanya is his sister Chetna (played by the naturally gifted Saloni Gaur) who refuses to be taken in by her brother’s sudden affluence and who would rather risk her rickety scootie breaking down on a deserted highway than buy a new one with her brother’s ill-gotten wealth.
I would like to know where Chetna’s righteousness takes her in life. I would also like to know where all the other characters, good, badgered and never ugly, will head after the end of the show. Will Kamlesh’s father actually sell his grocery store to the household Sonu?
Written with a remarkable flair for the rhythms of working-class life, Lafangey fills that lacuna in our streaming viewing for a series that doesn’t step into the working-class puddle as a tourist.
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