You heard some one say, "जेब मे मनी हो ना, तो कुंडली मे शनी होने से कुछ फरक नही पडता, ये मेरी अस्ट्रॉलॉजी है|" or " रिस्क है तो इष्क है|" or "सब के पॉकेट रॉकेट बन गये है|" or "सब मुझे अमिताभ बच्चन कहते है पर मै वो हू नही!" or may be, "मेहता ना राज मा, मार्केट मजा मा|", didn't you? I bet you did! Yes, these are some of the famous one liners said by the lead character from the popular web series Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story streaming on Sony Liv from 09/10/2020.
Pratik Gandhi, a famous young actor from the Gujrati theatre and movies has perfectly portrayed the character of the Big Bull of Dalal Street, Harshad Mehta. The words, 'he has lived the character' will be an understatement of his performance in this web series. While making Harshad Mehta come alive in screens of your TV, Pratik must have gone through lot of preparation and as he has rightly mentioned in online interviews, he has really un-learned everything keeping his acting as natural and being as neutral as possible. Being an Engineer by education and profession, the jargon of finance and stock market must have been a bit difficult for Pratik and thus, probably it would have been easy for him just to make his dialogues by heart and say them while shooting. But this might not have been as real as it is seen in the web series. The mannerisms, the way of behavior, the way of talking (not the way of dialogue delivery) all has been so perfect that it seems to be kind of muscle memory, like he is born with that attitude. A perfect example of 'getting under the skin of the character.' At least I cannot imagine any other actor in his place.
For me, Pratik Gandhi has overwhelmed the entire web series of ten episodes. But this does not mean that the performance of Shreya Dhanwanthary as Sucheta Dalal is something less than that of Pratik. Padmashri Sucheta Dalal was the journalist of The Times of India, who busted the scam, who actually coined the word scam for some big, well, really big financial irregularities in any transactions. This web series is based on the book "The Scam, Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away" written by Sucheta along with her husband Debashish Basu. Talking about the portrayal of Sucheta Dalal by Shreya, again an Engineering graduate, she too has nailed it! Her facial expressions are more effective than her dialogue delivery, I feel. This can be well seen in the very first episode when one Mr. Sharad Bellari, an employee of SBI turns up at the office of The Times of India to tell about the alleged financial irregularity, a घोटाला worth ₹500 Crore or more, happening in SBI. Sharib Hashmi has effectively played this small role the informer. The graph of Shreya's acting has been going up in this web series right from this very first scene! Another example of Shreya's perfect body language is the incidence of Pherwani's death. Shreya has perfectly shown the mental trauma Sucheta must have gone through due to that and probably blaming her article and hence herself for the death of Pherwani.
Talking about actors, Rajat Kapoor had exhibited the sleuth of K Madhavan, his stature, the urge to solve the case and punish the guilty, in a way that suits the attitude of then CBI Joint Director K. Madhavan, the officer who had investigated many other cases of national importance before probing the securities scam that made the stock market dive. I was fan of Rajat's acting ever since I saw him in Dil Chahta Hai as Mahesh Uncle. I liked it when Madhavan goes to the residence of Pherwani for interrogation and asks him to come to CBI office with him. The tactics of pressuring the suspect by asking him to climb up stairs for 5 floors to reach the interrogation room was nicely depicted by Rajat. But at the same time he lets Khamni to answer his questions in the comfort of Khemani's Cabin. This scam was the first financial scam probed by CBI, as mentioned in the series. As such the investigating team lead by Madhavan must have had tough time understanding the financial jargon making their life little difficult and this has been very well shown in many scenes related to the investigation and Rajat has perfectly shown his frustration due to this difficulty. He had been cool and yet seemed dangerous in the scenes with SBI staff and with Harshad. Especially when he breaks the handset of cordless phone while disallowing Harshad from making any phone calls!
Next in my list is actor Hemant Kher who played Harshad's younger brother Ashwin. Harshad Mehta had three brothers: Ashwin, Hitesh and Sudhir. However the makers of the series have retained only one brother in the series and that is Ashwin, since probably he had played pivotal role in Harshad's company Grow More. Along with that, he had warned Harshad of possible threats in many transactions which could lead them in trouble. In many scenes Hemant has proved that no one else could have done that role better than him. In the sequence when Ashwin tells Harshad that their bank accounts are sealed, Hemant's performance was very real! To me, portrayal of Ashwin Mehta as depicted by actor Hemant Kher is like Harshad's inner voice warning Harshad to stop being bullish.
And the list of the actors goes on! There are many more actors who have made this series look real. If I keep talking about all of them, this blog post will be little too long!! Actually there is no supporting cast, all characters are important. Since this series is based on real life incidences, and many of the persons are still alive and active in their respective professions, it was wise to retain the original names. However, the names of some characters are different than the real personalities, for some reasons, which are not revealed.
The direction of the series has taken it to far higher levels and actually had created bench marks. Director Hansal Mehta has again proved that he is a perfect grip on the making movies and TV shows related to real life characters, be it Omerta, be it Bose: Dead/Alive and my favourite The Accidental Prime Minister. He has perfectly extracted the characters out of all the actors! Also, his vision in creating the era of 1980s and 1990s and showcase Mumbai of those times from his lens in noteworthy. First and foremost, it was the main task of showing the the skyline of Mumbai to look like that in 80s and 90s. Hence the choice of outdoor locations in Mumbai was most important and there is no chance to point out mistakes like some high rise buildings or may be mobile towers being visible in any frame, including those captured by drone cameras. The collection of cars owned by Harshad including the famous Lexus is accurate to the times of the story. Early 90s was the time when landline phones with a cordless handset was a reality, which is nicely captured by Hansal. I wonder from where the directorial team could obtain so many CRT TVs in the era of flat panel LED TVs and those bulky computer monitors, and typewriters? The highlight of the direction, I feel, is the actor playing famous cartoonist Late R. K. Lakshman walking next to the sign of The Common Man in the office of The Times of India as Sharad Bellari enters the office of TOI.
The ring of the stock market where actual trading happens is shown in many episodes and it is shown to have witnessed Harshad's progress, and it is perfectly captured by change in the attire of Harshad from normal shirt and trousers to a suite, which also shows the eventual gain of confidence by Harshad, again, flawlessly depicted by Pratik. The display board stating the prices of all the listed shares is shown to be a blackboard while in 80s and then changed to digital signage in the 90s. Each episode ends with a Hindi movie song which was popular in those times and of course with its lyrics suitable to the main events in that episode. I liked this part very much. I don't have much of knowledge as to how the share market functions. But it is said to have sentiments, emotions. And those sentiments, those emotions in the trading ring are well captured including the sign language used by the traders and then during the crash of market on 18th March 1982, as shown in the series.
There may many other individuals like me who do not know how share market works. However this web series has simplified the technicalities for such viewers who do not understand the nuances of how the Sensex goes up and down, what decides the prices of shares of a company, what is insider trading and many more things. And that is one major success of the series, I feel.
The epitome of the series is the last scene of the 9th episode which showcases the famous press conference in January 1993. Suggestive usage of the original footage from that press conference has made that sequence really unforgettable!
While I write about this web series, I can be as verbose as I wish, so big is this mini series! During last 6 7 months I have watched many web serials and this one is a class apart! No guns, no action and minimum use of slang, I feel, these three things will take this series to achieve even higher success.
Also, I do not generally mention the names of the real persons (living or dead) in my blogs. But this series is so compelling that I had to write those names to make this viewer review of this series, look real. I feel this series is just story telling of what had happened in the BSE in those years and it does not glorify whatever Harshad Mehta had done. It would not encourage anyone else follow the same foot steps. Not to mention, the functioning of the BSE must have changed a lot in last 28 years and there must be some stricter rules and regulations now, I am not too sure. As I said I do not know much about how the stock market functions. This blog post is just about what I felt after watching the show and does not intend to defame any persons, living or dead, and/or any institutions, the names of which have appeared in this blog post. Neither this blog post intends to defame any Government institutions and authorities.
I herewith stop this Lekhanacha Udyog लेखनाचा उद्योग with a wish that we the common viewers of TV shows and movies would get to watch such real contents based on the real life stories more often and evolve as more mature audience.
-Chetan Arvind Apte
31/10/2020
Pune
Day Three Hundred and Fifth
Page Three Hundred and Fifth
