Sci-fi is a term from the last century. It’s now time for cli-fi, a genre that has so far not got a formal introduction. When it expands into ‘Climate Fiction’ that deals with the impacts of climate and global warming, it’s serious cinema that wants to awaken the environmentally somnolent.
The river has been poisoned. Their children are afflicted by an unknown disease. Driven out of their home in the jungles, all that the Bondria tribe wants is water, food and its dignity back.
But let’s begin with protagonist Priyamvada Das (Faria Abdullah), a bright financial analyst in London. Dr Ramachandra Rao (Nasser) who introduces himself as her father, Professor Das’ friend and colleague, summons her home because Das has gone missing.
The first few episodes provide the intrigue. Has activist Das (Pavitra Sarkar) joined the Naxals? Writer-director Nila Madhab Panda, along with co-writer Mayabk Tewari, makes a side sweep at activists who send their own kids to safety where they grow up disconnected from their mother tongue and their customs, as Priya, an LSE gold medallist, can’t speak Odiya. But she has the same steel as her doggedly determined father.
After the exoticism of the Bondria tribe, their silent bow-and-arrow ambushes and their desperation for fresh water, the labelling comes to the fore. A tribe gets tagged as Naxals when politics, police machinery and corporate greed come together.
In a while, all three layers of power come unpeeled.
The unresolved question remains, what exactly is going on at a private bauxite mine for which the Bondrias were ostensibly re-settled? What was activist Das with a JNU background of confrontational ideology, trying to expose when he disappeared or died? Why are international whistleblowers on a covert operation around Jengaburu?
All you know is that the mine under the lens has unprecedented security around it, a global conspiracy is afoot, dead bodies are callously buried while family members plead for a decent cremation. Journalists and investigative agencies, even government officials and laboratory scientists, anybody who ventures near the mine or shows interest in what’s going on there, is dropped off the map. You see Dr Panigrahi (Makarand Deshpande) who runs a Re 1 clinic, sneaking off to help and heal the hidden tribals with food and medicines.
With ACP Padhi (Shrikant Verma) and Tigga (Hitesh Yogesh Dave), a minister for tribal affairs, playing their foxy parts in the conspiracy and bigger criminals at work at the mine, only IAS officer Dhruv Kannan (Sudev Nair) and the tribals are out there to team up with Priya and venture with her into forbidden territory to ferret the truth.
Knowing one’s territory and having an emotional bond with it, arms a filmmaker with an extra privilege. Nila Madhab Panda clearly breathes the air of his home state Odisha, and is acquainted with every muscle twitch of its people.
You are struck by the beautiful photography (Paulo Perez) and the constant consciousness that Nila knows his state, his people, the tribals, the jungles, their beliefs, their customs. Above all, their exploitation. It’s not about development being at the cost of displacement, it’s about over-vaulting greed desensitising the exploiter. Where neither tribal nor nature, country nor humanity figure in how far he can go with the destruction of resources and lives.
But knowing too much and wanting to tell it all can also be a burden as Nila takes a tiresome route for his social messaging. The initial intrigue begins to wane as the plot plods on, like a heavy trek through a jungle which you have to hack through.
It is incredibly slow moving.
When Priya’s success as a one-woman mission concludes, she is congratulated for saving India from a global embarrassment. But to the viewer, it comes after a far-fetched and overstretched narration with many loose pockets. To cite just one: agencies (inimical or friendly) with unlimited manpower and sophisticated enough to have drones hovering jungles and updated technology, don’t know that a supposed Naxal has a sister?
Compromised cops and ministers (one keeps coughing and making trips to the doctor for a dire disease), too many badmen around the world and North Korea as chief villain waiting to buy up what’s being mined in Jengaburu, make the head go heavy and dizzy.
Yes, there’s a thin line between tribal and Naxal, it’s easy to damn the former as the latter. Yes, the eco system is being destroyed.
But a shorter time span and neater storytelling would have worked better for this cli-fi to hithome and be watched by many more.
A message on Priya’s phone that could well be the signal to another season, is also an overused ruse by many web shows. Wasn’t it the way the first season of Arya also ended?
Rating: 2/5
Watch The Jengaburu Curse Trailer:
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