Daayra

At what point does justice spill over into becoming revenge? When does “due process of law” degenerate into meaning legal loopholes to be taken advantage of by the perpetrator? How do law enforcers take the law into their own hands, aided by the footnote that the “law has to do its duty”? How does one decide what is within the “daayra” of the system and what isn’t? These are just a few of the multiple questions — many uncomfortable, most for which no one can really have an emphatic answer — that Meghna Gulzar throws at the viewer in her latest film. Daayra, which translates to “limit”, explores what the law really means in a country where most don’t have the patience for the deliverance of justice, living as we are within a system that delays — and often denies — justice. Which side of the divide are we on? More importantly, can we — and should we — pick a side?

A police drama that upends generic conventions, Daayra spins around a core composed of the tropes of a thriller blended with the dynamics of a procedural focussed squarely on the essentials. Director Meghna Gulzar, returning to the domain of crime, inquisition and punishment that Talvar explored, adopts an aptly workaday storytelling style enlivened by dazzling editing. Crime-busters in Mumbai movies are usually men (and sometimes women) who are fast-talking, quick-on-the-draw individuals. The two Daayra cops are a world apart. They are as committed to the uniform as any law enforcer one has seen in Hindi cinema. One believes in instant results, the other is slow and steady. The contrast underpins the debate at the heart of the tale.

Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar (2015) presents three perspectives on the 2008 Noida double murder case, but it makes no secret about what it really believes, lamenting a system for not doing its job. Gulzar’s Chhapaak (2020) is based on the courageous life of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal, but exposes a system that makes little difference even if it does its job. Both films are shaped by the frustration of operating within the porous framework of law and order, in a patriarchal nation where nothing except headlines change. Gulzar’s latest, Daayra, completes this social-postmortem trilogy. The frustration has mutated into unbridled rage.

“You can’t handle the truth!” screams Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessep when pushed too far by Tom Cruise’s Lieutenant Kaffee in A Few Good Men (1992). He is right, in a way. You deeply read about any conflict in the world in a bid to find a conclusive answer but what you really get is a truth that unsettles you, maybe questions your notions. Ideologies are ever-changing, so are political opinions and sides. Unlike the movies, life has no clear heroes and villains. There is no black or white. Before the release of Daayra, Meghna Gulzar’s new film starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran, the director posted a long note on Instagram, describing the film as “not binary” but “dual” and also “grey.” That the film is, in its truest sense. It doesn’t satisfy you with answers but presents you with two truths under two contexts, which you can choose from as per your ideology. The irony is that this is the film’s biggest strength and also its weakness.

Meghna Gulzar studies the modus operandi of a pair of cops committed to justice in Daayra. While DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran) has no hesitation in playing judge, jury, and executioner, DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) believes in the law following its own course. A clash of this nature is not entirely new but in Daayra, it forms the centrepiece of Gulzar’s storytelling where the worldview of two law enforcers is scrutinised in a straightforward, impartial manner. What lends Gulzar’s findings its complex appeal is, the more you mull on it, the more understandable their perspectives seem. At the centre of these ideological differences is the unchanging scenario of crime against women.

A morality tale with no moral compass of its own, Daayra continues director Meghna Gulzar’s creative spiral after Raazi (2018). That deeply humanist espionage drama is nearly a decade old, but instead of developing her style over time, Gulzar’s technical and thematic know-how appears to have disintegrated with each of the three features that she has directed since then. Like her breakout movie Talvar (2015), Daayra creates the illusion of moral ambiguity, but the film is built on a premise so fundamentally flawed that it’s never able to recover. In Talvar — a Rashomon-style mystery about the infamous 2008 Noida double-murder case — Gulzar made her allegiances quite apparent after spending two hours playing it cool. In Daayra, on the other hand, the filmmaker stops short of condemning something that shouldn’t be up for debate in the first place.

“Mera raasta alag hai,” says DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) in Daayra as she walks away from DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran). He strides in the opposite direction. The camera slips into slow motion, a song kicks in, and the lyrics spell out the obvious: ‘alag raasta’. It is a thriller announcing its metaphor the way a trailer announces a clash, set to a song that is decidedly not ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga’. That is Meghna Gulzar in 2026: still drawn to the space where law and justice stop being synonyms, still unwilling to let an image sit without a caption.

Meghna Gulzar showed her penchant for balancing two different viewpoints when she made the largely true-life Talvar (2015) with Vishal Bhardwaj as writer. Although this time it is a medley of cases that she mixes without picking any single one, Meghna’s flair for effectively presenting contrasting opinions continues as DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran) revels in public applause. Four monsters behind the grisly rape and murder of a charred body have been gunned down by the police. Self-defence, say Raman Kumar and his team. Let’s investigate, says DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan), introduced as a fearless cop heading a vigilance unit that keeps a check on the police. She has just busted a racket where superintendents fawn over VIP prisoners, serving them a special menu of quinoa pulao and avocado.