Home » Features » Murder In Mahim Is An Empty Adaptation Of Jerry Pinto’s 2017 Novel

Features

Murder In Mahim Is An Empty Adaptation Of Jerry Pinto’s 2017 Novel

This is #CriticalMargin where Ishita Sengupta gets contemplative over new Hindi films and shows

Ishita+Sengupta

May 11, 2024

Still from Murder In Mahim. Jio Cinema

ADAPTATIONS CAN BE TRICKY but they are the worst when dull. Raj Acharya’s Murder in Mahim is a tedious retelling of Jerry Pinto’s 2017 eponymous novel. The eight-episode series is a classic case of being burdened with the written word and, in turn, unfolding with sluggishness that evokes no curiosity about the original text. The show stems from unimaginative intent and culminates in a sort of repetitive storytelling that boasts of neither originality nor ambition. Instead, it stands out as one of the many streaming works that resemble an assembly-line sameness with little to no creativity.

In many ways, the existence of a show like Murder in Mahim makes sense in the current climate. Of late, the streaming roster has been clogged with thrillers where the procedure to arrive at the truth is treated as a smokescreen to make social commentaries while the revelation is reduced to a footnote. In the last couple of years, series like Richie Mehta’s Delhi Crime (2019) and Poacher (2024), Randeep Jha’s Kohrra (2023) have followed this pattern. Pinto’s book unwittingly has a similar outline in which gruesome murders in Mumbai’s Mahim railway station becomes a starting point to explore the queer subculture in the city and the many ways in which they are pushed to the brink. Set before 2018, when the Supreme Court of India was yet to decriminalize homosexuality, Murder in Mahim is designed as a whodunnit that unraveled with the rage of a writer who remained indignant about the fact that the right to love in his country is treated as a criminal instinct.

The ensuing adaptation, however, is bereft of anger or voice. The series is mind-bogglingly static like no editor was hired. Scenes, which could have been condensed for clarity and brevity, go on forever. Characters look at each other for seconds that feel like minutes, talk for minutes which feel like hours and ultimately resort to an act that begins to feel unnecessary by the time it arrives. At some level, the show was aiming to imbibe the slow burning template of the book but in its translation, it hardly retains any urgency or purpose.

What it does reserve is the broader outline and dunks them cliches. Pinto’s novel centered on the death of two gay sex workers at Mahim station and the coming together of a police officer, Shiva Jende (Vijay Raaz) and his friend, a retired journalist, Peter Fernandes (Ashutosh Rana) to solve the case. Through this setup, his book depicted the little but defining ways in which two heterosexual men come close to understanding the queer community. In Acharya’s hands, the change takes forever to happen and when it does, it feels like a jolt. Much of this is because the superficiality with which moments are treated.

When Fernandes gets an inkling that his son might be gay and that he is missing after the first murder, he types in his phone something as asinine as, “places gay people go to”. And when his son does turn up, the show takes eight, long episodes to lend clarity about his orientation as if that itself is a point of contention. There are more woeful missteps. Jende is written as a tortured cop with a troubled relationship with his father (a terrific Shivaji Satam) and distant connection with his son. The underlying aim is here to stitch together a portrait of toxic masculinity. To be fair, it is a joy to see Raaz and Satam in one frame and their moments of altercation are better done than the whole series put together. But rarely has a lead character been crafted with such tepidity. Jende’s character is torn between being a symbol of purpose and a stand-in of intent. By the time the series arrives at the seventh episode, he mouths lines which seem straight from a TVC with blatant messaging. It says something about the writing when someone like Vijay Raaz cannot sell it.

In fact, the writing in the show is a constant problem. Characters are not designed as much as cut out of stereotypes. No one is spared. Those who are Muslims utter, “Allah,” and “Abbu” in every sentence and the only time we see them eat, their plates are full of biryani. There is another Gujrati character whose table is filled with dhokla thepla and chorafali. The room of a gay man is filled with posters that say, “All we need is love and love is all we need ''. Later, when we meet an older gay man, his excessive portrayals subscribe to every stereotype associated with the community. His hands are all floozy, he has a younger boy toy and he refers to Peter Fernandes as “Peter boy”. This is not to say such flamboyance does not exist but it is difficult to look at that particular role (essayed by Rajesh Khattar) and not think about the promise Murder in Mahim squandered by not delving deep in this character of a middle-aged gay man living in Mumbai.

But by the time the show concludes, the unengaging writing stretches thin and becomes incomprehensible. The eighth episode opens with a resolution that came out of nowhere and made me check thrice if I missed something. Turns out I did not and my assumption is that maybe the absent-editor finally turned up. Pinto’s Murder in Mahim is not his greatest work but there is craftsmanship in the way he designed the collision of two worlds only for one to acknowledge and recognise their complicity in demonizing a community. There was insistence in his words. In the series adaptation, the worldviews clash and dissipate, leaving behind trails of emptiness.

Murder In Mahim is streaming on Jio Cinema