Film Review | Katiyabaaz

Darkness envelops Kanpur, already melancholic under a maze of electric wires. In this documentary on the city’s power theft crisis, you can’t see the bounty of the Ganga, or the abode of the aristocrat, or the coffee shops and malls. It is not a seat of Awadhi excess; it is a city that has given up. The haphazard and precariously loose electric cables frame the city’s streets and mohallas. The only sign of prosperity in this film is the unkempt lawns of a local bureaucrat’s residence, with a perambulating pug.

Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar, who have written and directed Katiyabaaz—a local term used to describe the expert in stealing electricity by tapping into the city’s power grids—begin their film with the appointment of a lady to the top post of the Kanpur Electricity Supply Co. Ltd (Kesco). No resident from the economically poor sections of Kanpur seems to pay their electricity bills, but their bedrooms are lit, at least for some time. Loha Singh is their hero—and the film’s. This diminutive katiyabaaz with a tragicomic aura has subverted the system effortlessly, and the writers’ sympathy for him is obvious from the start. The well-meaning bureaucrat who wants to change things also gets a fair amount of sympathy and screen time. Loha lights up tanneries, hospitals, factories and homes, and everyone considers him indispensable. The power crisis snowballs into a political battle leading up to the state election.

Will Kanpur descend further into darkness? Will Loha be punished, vilified or continue to be eulogized?

Documentaries by Michael Moore, and the political documentaries of Anand Patwardhan here, have famously had some staged scenarios, but their purpose is strictly to provoke their audience. Katiyabaaz does not provoke outrage or doubt; it is merely showing a reality most of India is immune to: that in the biggest industrial centre of India’s largest state, people live in darkness, and the political system and its vehicles are ineffectual in putting an end to it. Yes, a sorry state of affairs—this familiar conclusion also gives the film its timelessness and relevance.

Loha is a rebel. He earns little for what he does. He has bruises on his palms and a disfigured finger. The interviews with him are witty rants against evil politicians and policemen—his raspy and foul Uttar Pradesh tongue has a short-lived spark, which progressively gets monotonous. Ultimately, despite a telling lonely moment at the end, Loha does not emerge as a full character. He could be part of the ensemble cast of any film set in Uttar Pradesh, possibly by Anurag Kashyap or Tigmanshu Dhulia—a blustering, swaggering petty goon, a bhaiyya staple.

The realism in Katiyabaaz is cleverly crafted, its reality is not just limited to Kanpur, but is true of many B-towns and small towns in India. It is smartly packaged—the cinematography by Mustafa, Maria Trieb-Eliaz and Amith Surendran avoids the candid, hand-held shot completely, and depends heavily on the lighting and texture of the milieu and Kanpur’s downbeat urbanity. The background tracks, composed by Indian Ocean band members Amit Kilam and Rahul Ram and written by Varun Grover, propel the narrative with gusto.

It is heartening to see documentaries release on the big screen, and Katiyabaaz is the clever new avatar of this genre that turns the mundane and the extraordinary in reality into marketable and watchable cinema.

Katiyabaaz releases in theatres on Friday.