Love, loss, perseverence, and the class divide - in the Uphaar-tragedy show Trial by Fire

(Wrote this short review for Reader’s Digest India)
------------------

It is a truism, and a cliché, that many time periods live alongside each other in India. But for those of us who have a clear memory of 1997, it feels like that was a particularly strange, transitional time. Most city-dwellers were encountering the internet for the first time, via noisy dial-up connections. Quaint pagers were making way for bulky “mobile phones”. Just a few years into economic liberalisation, there was much promise of glitzy consumerist things to come (such as First World-level malls by big builders like the Ansals), but the execution was slow. The country’s first multiplex did open in south Delhi’s Saket that year, promising to glamorise the big-screen experience; and yet, just a few kilometres away, a much older single-screen hall – poorly maintained, lacking basic safety procedures – was about to see a grisly tragedy unfold.

The new series Trial by Fire is about the Uphaar fire which claimed 59 lives in June 1997, mostly told through the tribulations of Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy (deeply felt performances by Rajshri Deshpande and Abhay Deol) who lost both their children that day and have spent the last 25 years trying to hold powerful people accountable for the many lapses. This is a narrative that constantly expands its canvas. First it gives us a glimpse of a single family doing everyday things, a few hours before being torn apart; then the numb grief of two people in a house that feels empty; then it moves on to show the wider world, as Neelam and Shekhar become pro-active and form a group for healing and for justice.

All of which makes for a hard-hitting series that understands how time seems to stand still, or coil back on itself, for people whose lives have suddenly been petrified. The urgency of the first couple of episodes, where the Krishnamoorthys still hope for quick results, yields to a shift in pace as they realise this will be a long-haul fight. The show focuses on little details, such as Shekhar and Neelam each trying to hide painful reminders of their loss from the other: a birthday cake, extra toothbrushes in the bathroom. Or a crematorium scene where Neelam, as if drawn by a magnetic force, goes to another mother who she thinks has also lost her child; only to recoil and to feel almost betrayed when she realises the boy is alive.

It is about middle-class concerns too (“Kharcha kitna hua?” Neelam is asked when she brings photo-copies of dozens of important files home; even the horribly bereaved have to think about such things), and about systemic rot (“Kaise badlegaa sab?” Shekhar says despairingly after a bad experience in a queue). And as the show progresses, these themes are explored through the stories of other key people who were in different ways consumed – or scarred – by the Uphaar fire. This makes Trial by Fire structurally challenging in its later episodes, which move back and forth in time: between the Krishnamoorthys as their fight continues deep into the new millennium and others who in a sense are still frozen in 1997. For instance, episode 5 introduces us to an embittered former soldier and his wife (Anupam Kher and Ratna Pathak Shah). Then there is the marvellously directed episode 6, in which an electrical engineer, Veer Singh (played by Rajesh Tailang), is implicated as the search for easily prosecuted people gets underway.

In the Veer Singh narrative, long takes are artfully employed to span different events: he goes to jail, comes out again, goes back again, while his family lives in a state of suspension, waiting and hoping and despairing. Here is a view of what the fight for justice can do to the truly little people who are scapegoats, and even the episode title – “Villains” – is telling: from the perspective of this poor family, the Krishnamoorthys are the ones who have indirectly caused their misery. One beautiful shot gives us Veer Singh and his wife reflected like pale ghosts in a TV set after they have watched Neelam and Shekhar give an interview in a posh newsroom. It’s a suggestion that in a country where class privilege is so pronounced, the lines between victims and villains can become blurred.