Mai on Netflix : Hell hath no fury like a mother wronged
- Ritu Jhajharia
- Apr 27, 2022
- 5 min read
Sakshi Tanwar - the hugely underutilized acting powerhouse - is on prowl here, armed with her sharp acting chops on full display.
No major or obvious spoilers here. So chill and read on, whether you’re yet to watch Mai on Netflix or not.
This is not a paid review or even a traditional review. This is my freewheeling, unbiased and fashionable take on how I watched and absorbed this content.
“Meri Gudiya ko kisne maara?”
(who killed my innocent daughter Gudiya?)
When Sheel Chaudhary, brilliantly played by Sakshi Tanwar hisses these words through the currently trending Netflix India series, Mai, you know better than to cross this hurting mother.
I had been hearing and reading (mostly) good things about Mai. All reviews were not raving or particularly positive but more of a mixed bag, leaning towards positive. This is generally a good sign for me to watch something when I don’t see very black and white opinions about it. Sure, if most people find something as bad, it’s generally bad and one can steer clear of that content.
However, I’ve been let down, sometimes hugely by the madly positive reviews, more than once and now I’m generally skeptical of that. So mixed reviews and people feeling the need to analyze the series for its characters, plots, subplots, text and subtext were good signs for me to invest my time over the weekend in binging upon this new series.
And then there were those extremely funny memes also trending around intriguing me to check this series out.
So last Saturday afternoon, I sat down with a bowl of my favorite caramel popcorn on one side and my husband on the other to wander in the spinning world of Mai. And it didn’t disappoint despite many obvious and sometimes even cringeworthy pitfalls in its narrative.
Word of caution, this is more of an unfolding of how and why it’s done rather than whodunit.
It doesn’t work as a murder mystery rather a revenge thriller drama. Mai is not a new and path breaking story. A hurt mother out to seek revenge and protection for her family is nothing new.
Mai works because of how the story of its lead character is told.
I wasn’t surprised that this gripping revenge thriller is coming from the Clean Slate Filmz founded by Anushka Sharma. This production house has been giving us gritty and gripping Indian OTT content in the last couple of years and Mai, though weaker than the earlier outings, still is very much in the same spectrum.
I had written in detail about Bulbbul, a Netflix Original movie by the same production house earlier in 2020 (read my review of Bulbbul here). And after that, I could not continue writing here owing to the paucity of time mixed with my own laziness. So it’s kind of poetic that I’m resuming writing here with another OTT content by the same team after they gave us Bulbbul about a couple of years ago.
So let’s wander in the dark, grim and gritty world of Mai and see what works and doesn’t in this series.
Mai is stylish and gripping in its own way and works on many levels
Mai has an ambience. The colors on screen are a bit muted. The characters have a next door-sy feeling and the events take place in our everyday neighborhood. The labyrinth of Lucknow gives a good backdrop to some scenes and the city itself lends a character to the narrative. The characters are styled meticulously keeping their persona, lifestyle, work environment and situations in mind.
The styling here is beautifully understated and integral to each character instead of overpowering them. Even when there is a high class prostitute turned don’s favorite turned don, Neelam (played by Raima Sen), it’s not over the top. Neelam knows how to do power dressing right and earn her respect in this male bastion.
The careful detailing of key characters is the biggest plus point of this series and what makes it work. Sure, there are some half baked characters and seemingly unnecessary subplots, sometimes dragging the pace of the things, however the key characters are well developed and strike the right chord with the audience. And the season leaves no doubts that there is going to be a following season so ample chance to dig deeper into those characters and subplots if makers want to.
All in all, Mai represents the everyday life of main characters and their styling lends a certain authenticity to the story.
Here are some serious character design and style takeaways from this thrilling drama.
Don’t measure someone up just based on their clothes and appearances
The biggest strength of the lead character Sheel Chaudhary (played by Sakshi Tanwar with absolute perfection) is how underestimated she is by everyone around her. Sheel's character works as a caring nurse to elders in an old age home. This thoughtful character design works as a perfect contrast to the menacing, cold blooded and merciless murderer that she becomes. No one can even think of her being capable of the raw violence and torture that she unleashes on people who wrong her.
She mostly wears comfortable cotton saris and sandals. She oils her hair and ties them up in a regular braid. She carries a practical cross sling bag everyday. She has no mentionable accessories, nothing particularly stands out about her.
She is coy, shy, respects and obeys her elders, takes care of everyone rather dutifully. She silently toils through her familial and work duties. She expresses no particular desires or quirks. She doesn’t talk back, she doesn't complain openly. She is easily miss-able, there is nothing particular about her that stands out. She is as close to an Indian mother as we can think of. And on top of that she is a grieving mother who just lost her young daughter in front of her own eyes. So she has everyone’s sympathy.
And then when needed Sheel uses all of this to her advantage. She can easily be missed so she continues on her mission. It’s almost unfathomable that she could be behind the trail of high profile murders so she roams free. She easily accesses the right places because her presence is not alarming. People vouch for her dutifulness, her dedication to care and don’t feel threatened by her. She silently and determinedly goes about her quest and her everyday life without raising any suspicions.
She can murder someone without any weapon, without blinking an eye and hide in the plain sight. Even better, she comes across more as a poor victim rather than menacing serial murderer who is clearly an undiagnosed psychopath.
Be comfortable with who you’re and the rest follows
So yeah, looks can be very deceptive and your own prejudices can be very harmful if you rely too much on how people look and dress and generally come across. You can never know what someone is truly capable of until they’re cornered or pushed over the edge. Sheel’s character is a good eye opener to not judge people blindly on their appearances if you need one.
Switch up your dressing and your behavior when the situation demands it
There are two very distinct yet subtle (ok one of them is not so subtle) changes that you would notice in Sheel’s character as the series progresses, only if you pay close attention.
She slowly moves from wearing saris all the time to wearing comfortable suits when needed so that she can move around easily. This one is easily miss-able if you don’t look closely. The shift is so subtle and smooth.
She notices her dead daughter’s sporty sneakers, symbolically in red color, and starts wearing those everyday, ditching her sandals. This change works in two ways. It’s shown as a symbol of both her attachment to her daughter’s memories and also as a silent vow to avenge her wrongful death, come what may. This you can’t miss and the shoes are almost a side character here with their own crucial events.
Once Sheel starts wearing these shoes, she can’t go back to wearing any other footwear. She is wearing these with saris, with suits, at home, at work, at family gatherings, everywhere. An important scene in which she infiltrates the don’s den without anyone knowing and scales a wall is made believable thanks to her switch to wearing suits and these sneakers (and also her fit and lean body even when she is close to being in her fifties, but we will come to that later). She couldn’t have scaled that wall wearing sari and sandals, that would be too far fetched.
Choose comfort over fashion and tradition and everything else in between, always!
So even though Sheel stays close to her family values and coy character and there is no drastic change in her personality at least on the outside, she knows how to tweak things just enough when needed.
Similarly, she also behaves as the situation demands. She cries unabashedly, she doesn’t hide her deep sadness and grief and she has her emotions in control when she needs to be a careful caregiver. She knows how she is expected to behave in her societal role of a woman as per her conditioning. But don’t be fooled with her calm and caring demeanor.
Just as easily, she can give out those cold chilling stares, can grit her teeth hard, can raise her voice just enough, can shout out loud, can negotiate difficult situations, can lie convincingly, and can threaten in a tone that clearly tells that she means business. This is a woman you don’t want on your wrong side and you’ll know that when she wants you to. She can go from being a tender mother to a cold hearted murderer to a knowledgeable caregiver in the same breath.
Sheel is a believably contradicted character.
Women don’t have to dress like or behave like men to win
Mai is essentially a story of powerful female characters, good, bad and ugle or black, white and grey. And each one of them is comfortable in their own skin. They’re powerful and they know and you can feel it.
Women of Mai don’t feel the need to dress like or behave like men to exude or assert their power.
Their power dressing is about being authentic, comfortable and pragmatic and not about signaling their power via clothing.
They can curse if needed, or not. They can kill their abusive husbands or kill to save their loved ones. They can demand love and respect and can also tend to their families. They can burn someone without thinking twice or put balm over their burns. They can try to save a young misguided boy or kill him in an instant when he threatens to hurt your family.
They can be a sidekick to a don or take over the operations or turn to police when required. They can be old and bed-ridden and yet not just love their sons but also their mistresses with aplomb. They might not be able to speak and yet create an uproar against corrupt powers.
And they do this all without feeling the need to dress or behave like men as so many of us are fed misguided notions of what power is about and how to assert it, to win in a man’s world.
There really is no substitute for fitness and health in life
Remember where earlier in this article, I told you about Sheel infiltrating a don’s den, scaling a wall, moving around the house silently to accomplish her mission without anyone even noticing? Well, Sheel’s character is easily flirting with fifties. She lost a daughter who was in her mid-twenties and we can safely guess that Sheel is somewhere around 47-50 years old. She is a gentle homemaker and a medical caregiver in an old age home. And a host of other things.
Yet, she ends up on a killing and investigation spree while looking for her daughter’s killers? She unwittingly is brushing shoulders with some very powerful forces on the wrong side of the law. She is unearthing a big scam in the process. She is kidnapping and torturing people. She ends up killing or plotting to kill some powerful gang lords. And whatever it takes to avenge her daughter’s death, she is unstoppable. She is scared but also hugely motivated to continue. She is short on resources or help but is quick-thinking, swift and enterprising.
She uses everything that she can to her advantage, and her knowledge and practice of medicine as a nurse end up becoming her biggest weapons. She doesn’t need guns and bombs or big gestures, just the right dosage of right medicines at the right time to clean up her enemies even before they realize what hit them.
And she is able to go about all this, simply because she is a fit and healthy woman. Despite all the pitfalls of a woman’s life in a traditional Indian household, she has managed to stay lean and fit and she moves through her challenging situations with an ease that only a healthy and fit person can.
Note to Self : Stay fit and healthy, everything else is secondary in life.
The saga of unpaid and unreasonable labor of females continues even in grief
Sheel not only takes care of her own home but is also expected to contribute to her brother-in-law’s family and chores at home. She is not only supposed to take care of her child but also theirs. She is supposed to oversee the party plannings at brother-in-law’s house and cook in their kitchen even when she is invited as a guest. She picks up their son from school everyday and takes care of the medicine supply at their clinic. She is supposed to even give her own children to them when they can’t bear their own.
Even her daughter who is studying to be a doctor and is not a pushover is supposed to help her uncle and aunty at their home. All of this in addition to their other responsibilities at their own home and careers.
She even doubts and blames herself when she learns about her daughter’s affair post her death from her husband. She feels that she has failed in being a good mother. The burden of raising children well also largely falls on women’s shoulders.
Let’s acknowledge this - families can be really suffocating and it’s alright to not give in to the familial tropes
But the scene that really steals the show in this depiction is when Sheel is grieving the loss of her daughter in a tragic accident in front of her, and she is making tea for the people who have come to join them in their mourning.
Let me say it again. A woman is supposed to play the perfect host to guests, serve homemade hot tea and be all graceful even when she has just lost her daughter.
Yes, this is as close to reality as it can be when it comes to the treatment of women and ignoring their labor and contribution in running families.
Sakshi Tanwar stars in a hard hitting short film, Ghar ki Murgi, on the matter and the two characters played by her look like an extension of each other. Guess, it’s intentional.
She can’t be a guest without working, she can’t even grieve without working. Wrap your head around that.
Read my review of Thappad, a hard hitting depiction of female’s plight in Indian families
The Pitfalls - Where does Mai lose the plot then?
The pitfalls are quite obvious.
The story of a shy mother transforming into a killing machine is not something fresh. It has its own obvious traps and many times relies too much on viewers’ leniency to believe. The lead character faces very little resistance in her difficult quest and goes on to murder without hiccups. She is also not shown to have any remorse even after her first, and wrong, murder.
At times, Sheel’s character demands too many leaps of faith from the viewers. She operates and succeeds like a trained covert operative; however she has not as much spoken against wrongdoings in her own family before becoming a merciless killing machine.
There are too many characters and subplots in this short series and not all add to the story. Both story and editing could have been tighter. Some really fine actors are also kind of wasted in half baked characters and have not been able to show their acting range.
Raima Sen seems like a miscast in this role and felt like she was uncomfortable in getting under the skin of her role. Also her character had a lot more scope to be developed but is treated with haste. I was hoping that it would be interesting to see her in this role after a long while but it’s more of a let down.
Vivek Mushran doesn’t have much to do here and his subplot with another woman adds nothing to the story. Not sure if he will have a meatier role in the following season.
But the biggest let down was wasting talents like Seema Pahwa and Prashant Narayanan. Both are powerhouse characters and could have made for very interesting casting and narrative if given space. And yet, both are hugely wasted in their poorly written roles. Let’s hope that their characters have better outings in the following season.
I’ll definitely look forward to and watch the following season despite these pitfalls as this is definitely a good try towards making strong female narratives and it is also good entertainment.
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Very well written review.
Nice and honest review .
Lovely review, Ritu. Read it in one go, makes me feel like I should watch it, mostly for Sakshi.
Keep writing!