Mridul Chakraborty

Hello everyone, Panchayat !! A deja vu to Shah Rukh Khan's Swades. Beginning with the story line up, without the spoiler alert, Panchayat brings a very unique way of portraying a story of a mundane village which evolve around a handful of talented actors. Jitendra Kumar who plays the role of Abhishek is the central character of the story, has just completed his engineering and in order to satisfy the societal pressure he grabs a nominal income job as compared to his friend prateek played by Biswapati sarkar who works in an MNC. Abhishek is neering to the breaking point in his life where he is compelled to join his job as a secretary of Panchayat office in a very remote village in UP as he has no other choice appart from continuing the job and preparing for MBA. The story revolves around manju devi played by evergreen Neena Gupta and her husband brij Bhushan played by Raghuvir Yadav. Manju devi is the newly elected "pradhan" of the village as her husband Birj Bhushan who lost during the election, but is still famous among the villagers as the village is male eccentric and women are still considered to manage household chores. The story started to influence more, when prateek planted the story of Swades in the mind of the viewers, where Abhishek was eventually compared to Mohan bhargav as he shall see and work in India from a grass root level. It was not once but many a times when the instance was brought into light. Implementation of single liners, quality dialogue writing, camera angles, cinematography and out of all the screenplay being the sole winner. The 8 episode series moves with its own pace when it shows various aspects of village life. Firstly male eccentric society where the husband's takes control over the Panchayat work even though their wives stands in the election. Secondly, electricity still being the prime issue in the country and solar lights perhaps crawling to the surface with limited supply. Thirdly, dowry pratha not completely vanishing from the rural India. With this 3 major take aways, comedy was exactly put into the story, no less no more, just as salt plays it's part, in a meal with plethora of laughs. Making birth certificates to various government policies like family planning and MNREGA, were put into the lineup with light hearted humor. Panchayat is a perfect example of what is required to make a series go with a perfect flow. However, many a times in life, ones simplicity is sometimes taken too seriously. Village ideosyncratic people are still unaware of the city life, where people enjoy their so called "Friday nights" in light to the hardships they face in the entire week. Hopefully they are also unaware of the fact, to what a youngster wants from one's life or even feels, as everytime he is mocked for the 20 thousand salaried job. He keeps numb and moves ahead with the goal to crack CAT eventhough he couldn't succeed in his first attempt. The best moment arrives in the last one minute of the series, perhaps the chlifhanger, when Abhishek meets rinki(daughter of the Panchayat pradhan). After being annoyed of his frustrated and failure drenched life for the entire time , it seems, being in the middle of nowhere his gradual realisation that he might be getting somewhere, as his eyes getting lit up with the areal view of the village, with his dreams of getting a high paid job in one hand and rinki on the other hand, we just have to wait,which weighs more, or can he balance it !