The Secrets Of The Shiledars Is A Map To Nowhere

IN A SCENE from Disney+Hotstar’s The Secrets of the Shiledars three people ponder over the relevance of a blank piece of paper they’ve found in the secret compartment of a high court judge’s office. They look at it bemused and resign to the deduction that it could have been placed there, like most Indian households, as a coaster for dirt. Except, steam from a cup of tea begins to reveal something on its own. “Invisible ink,” someone declares victoriously. It’s the kind of dumb luck that makes secret histories and the quest to unravel them come alive; a nifty mixture of past anecdotes merged with the whimsy and contingencies of the present. In an age where history has become a politically contentious agent, to use it as a storytelling device makes sense. Except, Shiledars is far too derivative to unlock something that hasn’t already been done by Nicolas Cage’s National Treasure or by Spielberg’s Indiana Jones. It’s pacey, and fairly twisty, but struggles to deduct originality from the fossils of the past.

Rajeev Khandelwal plays Ravi, a doctor who moonlights as a committed history buff. He knows his dates, his maps, his emperors and his insurgents. This makes him the ideal protagonist for a mystery that goes back centuries to the era of Shivaji. As a fallout of the Mughal-Maratha war, the erstwhile Maratha ruler, it is proposed, shifted his most valuable belongings into the care of a secret cult called the Shiledars. Soldiers of the king, these people are tasked with protecting the treasure, not just for the duration of the battle with the Mughal empire, but for the generations that followed. Ravi is the latest inductee into this league of guardians. Joining him on this quest is his tech-savvy younger brother and a shifty young lawyer in the form of Priyali (Sai Tamhankar).

The show sets itself up fairly neatly. A high court judge baptises Ravi with the burden of inheritance. Unsurprisingly, his father has a connection to the cult as well ala National Treasure. Khandelwal and his nervy brother sport bafflement but soon take to the shoes they’ve been asked to run in, with aplomb. Khandelwal, dressed in baggy cargoes and a matching military shirt has looked the part all along. Subtlety and nuance are not a device here. Once the chips fall where they are supposed to, the clues unravel as a long-running marathon of twists and discovery. From Ashoka’s stupa to a chamber that hides a secret tunnel, a fair bit of chat-GPT history gets thrown around as prestige associated with the process. You don’t need to fact-check it but simply admire it for its urgency and mock cleverness.

Based on Prakash Suryakant Koyade’s Marathi historical fiction novel Pratipaschandra, and directed by Aditya Sarpotdar, the show must at least be credited with attempting a genre that is woefully underrepresented in our culture. History is a touchy subject unless it is operated in the service of revered, even controversial figures. A critical assessment simply wouldn’t be welcome. This is why Shiledars’ dispensation of literature feels like a shallow re-enactment of a high school essay. It explains the sophomore feel of the production and the writing. One clue, for example, takes the gang to Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar, a potentially lip-smacking split in the timeline of events that turns out to be a drab meet-and-greet with a tertiary character. In the race to echo banal facts, the show lets slip devices that could add depth and maybe relevance to the narrative. This quite explains why the show feels like it doesn’t know what era it is set in.

For large parts, Khandelwal pulls his weight. He is handsome and dreamy enough to hold your attention and sell the hunk behind the knowledge. Ashish Vidyarthi, who arrives late on the scene, is as dependable and mesmerising as ever. The rest, more or less, make up the numbers, undercut by a rushed script and a plotline that can’t harness characters as viable anchors of a complex story. Ravi is intense, smart, and on his toes but he doesn’t offer much except urgency. Part of the charm of Cage’s role in National Treasure was his narcissism. Replaced here with the blankness of knowing and saying without the roots of feeling. It’s a lot of smoke without much of a fire to justify hype and hysteria.

The Secrets of the Shiledars isn’t terrible, but it falls short of being brave and audacious. It wants to chase Indian history, with the tools and aesthetics of the West. It makes for a gimmicky schoolyard roller coaster, embodied by quarrelling adolescents as opposed to men who know a thing or two about how the world works. The show’s audience is clearly younger, but it still can’t quite manufacture a fitting world to pull them in. It’s a laundry list of things picked up watching Western adaptations and passed down to the runnels of Indian folklore. One must admire the endeavour, but detest the process.

The Secrets of the Shiledars is now streaming on Disney+Hotstar