Of Fathers And Sons
Episode 5 of Paatal Lok begins in the past with a young Chaudhary berated by his father. When he refuses to eat the dinner made for him, his Father slaps him and chases the young boy out into the alleyway, where Chaudhary is almost hit by a car. Back in the present, an ashamed Chaudhary returns home to Renu and admits he’s been suspended. To add insult to injury, Siddha has a report from school that requires him to show up and give a talk given he’s a cop. Heading out for tea later that morning, Chaudhary notices Mary staring across at him as she’s transferred away from the station and it gets him thinking. He heads up to speak to Bhagat, mentioning how someone is covering their tracks and with Taljera missing and Taariq dead he implores his superior to look into this. However Bhagat is having none of it and gently, but firmly, reminds Chaudhary that he’s suspended. After taking over the case, the CBI contact Dolly after failing to get through to Sanjeev. Suspecting something amiss, she tries ringing him but his phone happens to be switched off. Instead, he phones Sunil who vouches for Sanjeev given he’s with Sara again. Up in their apartment, Sara and Sanjeev discuss running a story on the four men and finding out just who they are. However, before he can press forward with it the CBI phone him again and inform they want to meet. After a particularly heartbreaking moment involving Dolly finding out the truth about Sanjeev, our journalist meets with the CBI who reveal that the hit on his life was a well-planned operation. With elections around the corner, the ones behind this may well be the group known as ISI but they implore him not to leak this information for now. Only, Sanjeev takes that as a hint to spill the details himself. Following several episodes of Saddhi following a bad crowd and being mixed up in questionable activities, he finally snaps and pulls a gun on a student at school. This inevitably brings Chaudhary into school where he’s forced to cover for his son. Ansari tags along too and vouches for Chaudhary’s drunkenness, telling the principal that he’s undercover and it’s on a “need to know basis”, something that’s obviously been a recurring joke for these two men. Sanjeev goes on-air and calls out the ISI, telling them he may be a marked man but he’s ready for them. It forces the police’s hand and they too hold a press conference with a number of different pieces of evidence they’ve collected, including Taariq’s suicide note which certainly seems suspicious given he was strangled. As Ansari and Chaudhary meet to discuss this revelation, Ansari mentions the notes regarding Kabir were written in Urdu. Only… Kabir doesn’t know how to write Urdu which reinforces the fact that someone is covering this up. The real question is…who? With a deeper mystery beginning to work its way into the series and Chaudhary working off the clock, there’s a growing conspiracy now as we move away from the history of these four suspects and begin to piece together the shadowy forces working to silence Sanjeev. The interesting juxtaposition between Chaudhary’s upbringing and his own attitude toward his son is one of the stand-out moments of this episode though and it’s interesting to see this filter down through the years, especially given Saddhi’s behaviour toward school. It’s a small inclusion but one that’s certainly welcome and adds another layer of depth to this drama. Quite who the mastermind is behind all this though remains to be seen but the second half of this crime mystery looks set to step it up and deliver an exciting slew of episodes.
