Akka

Indian streaming turns ten this year, and Akka is what Netflix has to show for it. The platform introduced itself to the country with Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane’s S_acred Games_, a series with a worldview and the nerve to be bleak. Now we get a Netflix show set in Pernuru, a fictional kingdom ruled by women where an outsider arrives and threatens the peace. It could have been a chance to rethink the gangster genre. But Akka is happy to imagine a female version of it, with the same swagger and the same rituals of loyalty and betrayal, only the pronouns changed, leaving the genre otherwise untouched. That complacency says everything about the moment. Creators and platforms alike treat streaming as an afterthought. Netflix still hasn’t cracked the country, which has no single media appetite and no single disposable income, so its shows keep falling back on the grammar of television: the loud score, the lots of mutual glaring between characters, the plot that explains itself through expository dialogue, and a narrative content to drag itself to oblivion.

Akka on Netflix is unlike anything you’ve seen before. Set in an unusual world where women call the shots, this series creates a universe governed by power, loyalty, fear and legacy. It is a society where women don’t just occupy positions of authority; they fiercely protect what belongs to them, passing down their influence and traditions from one generation to the next. But every empire has its vulnerabilities, and when an outsider arrives to challenge a legacy that has ruled Pernuru for years, the carefully guarded world begins to unravel. At the centre of this conflict are two formidable women. Bhavani, played by Keerthy Suresh, is a powerful figure whose authority and legacy come under threat from Rudra, portrayed by Radhika Apte. Rudra is a ruthless rebel with her own ambitions, and she is determined to challenge the established order and claim what she believes is rightfully hers. What follows is a gripping battle of egos, ambition, revenge and survival, with the two women refusing to back down.

आम धारणा है कि सत्ता की बागडोर यदि महिलाओं के हाथ में हो या ताकतवर पदों पर उनकी भागीदारी ज्यादा हो, तो समाज बेहतर हो सकता है, क्योंकि महिलाओं में दया, करुणा और दूसरों का हित सोचने जैसे भाव जन्मजात होते हैं। मातृसत्ता से संचालित काल्पनिक राज्य पेरनुरु पर केंद्रित वेब सीरीज ‘अक्का’ की नींव शायद इसी सोच पर पड़ी होगी। सीरीज की शुरुआत में राज्य की मुखिया यानी अक्का कहती भी है कि पेरनुरु की समृद्धि और भारत के बाकी राज्यों के मुकाबले नौ गुना बेहतर साक्षरता दर की वजह उसका मातृतंत्र है। ऐसे में यह समझना मुश्किल है कि आखिर यह समृद्ध और शिक्षित राज्य सोने की तस्करी और शराब के धंधे के लिए क्यों जाना जाने लगा? वहां की महिलाएं डॉक्टर, वकील और वैज्ञानिक बनने के बजाय बंदूक और कटार चलाने तक क्यों सीमित रह गईं? पेरनुरु का यह पतन ही ‘नेटफ्ल‍िक्‍स’ की इस नई क्राइम-थ्र‍िलर सीरीज की सबसे बड़ी कमजोरी है।

In this age of remakes and adaptations and loose inspirations, I automatically nurse a soft spot for originality. The moment I see a period production that’s not based on pre-existing mythology, literature, movies or true events, it’s like discovering a rare (and soon-to-be-extinct) animal or an uninhabited new island at the corner of the earth. The heart rate shoots up. The mind hopes. You mean world-building is the actual building of a world without blueprints? The characters and rules are conceived from scratch? The fiction is imagined out of thin air? Backstories are created? How is that possible?