Gram Chikitsalay Tries, But Can’t Match Panchayat’s Pulse

Gram Chikitsalay Struggles To Step Out Of Panchayat’s Shadow

TVF’s patented rural formula appears in a new bottle, but can’t quite rid itself of the stench of sameness, writes

Manik Sharma .

“KOI JAGAH AGAR TUMHE ACCEPT NAHI KARTI , toh tum uss jagah ko accept karlo ”, a well-meaning woman tells Prabhat, our protagonist in Prime Video’s Gram Chikitsalay. It’s a scene that could serve as the log line for TVF’s multiverse of rural narratives: the village as the site of internal awakening. Longing for the land, the dirt and the malaise that make up India, and the Indian within it. Born from the same seed and struggling to escape the shadow of the wildly successful Panchayat , Gram Chikitsalay sees another young urban man exchange enlightenment with the great Indian village.

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Amol Parashar plays Prabhat, a youthful medical officer recently posted to Bhatkandi, Jharkhand. You will have to really stretch your faculties to tell this village apart from the now-iconic Phulera . There is a lot more plumage, fertile stretches of green, and a block of mountains looking over. Everything else gives you a sense of déjà vu . Like its predecessor, this five-episode season revolves around another government-owned, but poorly run institution - the local public health centre. Prabhat’s encounters with hurdles begin on the day of arrival itself. Even the path to the PHC is blocked by encroached land. And thus begins the tragicomic, at times absurdist, rigmarole of trying to clear the haze of myth, mystery and madness in a slow-burn, but also mildly entertaining slog.

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In a way, this edition of TVF’s How I Met Your Village , is possibly more urgent than Panchayat ’s rendition of soap opera done with the tenor of rural whimsy. Medical healthcare is a sore spot in India’s burgeoning story of self-reliance and growth. GDP figures, expanding economy and the numbers that lift spirits ahead of Mumbai’s trading battles, hide the cracked earth underneath the layer of profit and loss. In reality, most of India still doesn’t have access to proper healthcare. It ought to make this show about a plucky, dogged medical professional trying to wire some humanity and awareness into the last outpost of India unseen, that much more relevant. Unfortunately, it’s a cheque that the show’s premise writes, but the execution can’t quite cash it. It can neither match the grimness of the brilliant Lakhon Mein Ek (also Prime Video), nor summon the colourful, lauki -wielding lightness of Panchayat .

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The TVF canvas is obviously detectable. A large cast, episodic events that unravel as mini epiphanies, and in between, this one thread that drives Prabhat’s journey to the heart of the hinterland and its people. A battle he must fight on the outside and the inside. Unlike Panchayat ’s Sachiv Ji, though, he arrives motivated and driven. It’s a job he wants to do. But moral clarity alone can’t be his method. To mend this body of ailments, he must first become one with the disease. It’s a lesson, casually delivered by the village’s quack, played by the dependable Vinay Pathak. People pick quacks over doctors, not because they don’t have the option not to, but because they’d rather trust ‘one of them’. In this corner of the country, like many others, it’s the depth of your heart and not the vastness of your mind that’ll earn you trust.

Read here for details on Gram Chikitsalay Season 2.

Hinterland niceties, jocular characters and a generously uplifting view of what is essentially startling poverty work overtime to give Bhatkandi a sense of wonder. Created by the same team that created Panchayat , this show, however, lacks the sharpness, the performances and the tight, nuanced writing that made the original so affecting. The former seamlessly interlocked itself with the individual and the collective — a journey that the urban viewer simply can’t experience because of how we live today. Here, that sense of camaraderie is suggested, served in paper plates and greasy nicknames, but rarely recreated with the self-effacing humanity that the Panchayat managed. Possibly the one shining light is Parashar, an actor capable of lighting up the screen and lifting insipid material from the by-lanes of dull familiarity. If only he had been given more to work with.

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Medical taboos, crumbling infrastructure and crippling poverty are all serious issues that Gram Chikitsalay walks into, not knowing what to do with either. There are thudding moments of charm and grating moments of realisation, but without the streak of humour, the sense of entropy that we have come to expect of India’s hinterland, it all feels a bit prosaic. In one episode, two political opponents try to pressure Prabhat into writing false medical reports against the other. It’s a bemusing snapshot of small-town India, its petty yet invigorating battles with the self and the other. Unfortunately, neither the hilarity nor the Kafka-esque reality of this mushy yet macabre world is ever fully realised. It’s like watching something bittersweet, perpetually conflicted about which of the two it ought to be.

Gram Chikitsalay is now streaming on Prime Video.

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