How engaging can a show on the mundane workings of a tahsildar office be? This is the challenge ahead for Malayalam filmmaker Srikanth Mohan in Jai Mahendran – which he aces for the most part.
The six-episode series on Sony LIV follows the lives of revenue department employees in a small town in Kerala. There’s nothing unfamiliar about the set-up. Yet, in Jai Mahendran, this is also where the fun lies.
Landline phones are perennially off the hook. Palms are routinely greased for even petty tasks, while incorruptible citizens run around to get their work done. Title deeds are assigned to favourites (payment in biryanis is accepted). Even the chauffeur gets kickbacks.
Leading the pack of file-pushers is deputy tahsildar Mahendran (Saiju Kurup). Mahendran loves making promises, whether to the bhajji stall owner squatting on government-owned land or the government employee with a bird problem in his office. But when a strict new boss (Suhasini Maniratnam) is appointed, the office’s functioning is severely disrupted.
Rahul Riji Nair’s tight writing ensures that the mini-series stays sharp. In a narrative with barely any over-the-top drama, the comedy flows from the absurdist moments that happen to bored inhabitants of a government office.
We have a clerk worried about the crunchiness of his unniappams rather than the file in front of him, the regular angry citizen, and a tea seller who files Right to Information applications just to learn about the office gossip.
Saiju Kurup is excellent as the smiley-faced fixer who can also bring out the claws when necessary. Jai Mahendran doesn’t shy away from depicting how entrenched political influences often are in district-level offices.
The new employee Prajas is welcomed with compliments for his unusual name. But when he reveals his political leanings, “nice name” turns into “strange name.” That said, the show never takes itself too seriously, offsetting legalese and bureaucratic jargon with the levity found in relationships outside of the office. Mahendran’s banter with his wife (Miya George) are welcome breathers.
Jai Mahendran weakens once the conflict is exposed in the middle act. The light touch is missed in the portions where Mahendran learns a lesson about betrayal.
But the show doesn’t take too much time to pick up from where it left off. Jai Mahendran returns to form when its titular character is back to doing what he does best: killing people not with kindness but with selfishness.
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