Aarya Analysis

Aarya (2020)

Created by: Ram Madhvani, Sandeep Modi
Based on: Penoza by Peter Bart Korthuis
Written by: Sandeep Shrivastava, Anu Singh Choudhary

Spoilers Ahead. Read it after you've watched the show - it's streaming on Hotstar.

I'm not a big fan of shows, but the only reason I love them is because of the writing - the way there are several conflicts, subplots, character arcs - long, short; and how all of them are interconnected to a single world, and the way all are resolved by the end. This show too has several conflicts, after the first episode the internal conflict of Aarya's family is dealing with the loss, her quest to find out who killed Tej and why, the pressure from the police and the external conflicts, saving evidence from police, dealing with the gangsters and people who are threatening to kill her and her family. Each of the conflict is treated with respect, and somehow every subplot of a character is connected to the main plot - whether it's Veer's girlfriend being blackmailed, Aru's connection with Bob and how that ends up, the way Aarya's mother is fed with her husband and tells Aarya the truth - all of them lead up to the main plot and we don't feel like we've wasted our time with a character who is not relevant to the main plot.

Daulat is the Kattappa here, loyal to the family and he kills Baahubali (Tej) on the orders of Sivagami (the head of the family). It's an interesting twist, but the reason for this felt a little convenient - the eavesdropping didn't feel convincing. The way they reveal Daulat being the killer to us an episode before the characters knowing it, is an interesting tool where we, the audience, are at an advantage and this builds up suspenseful drama. We know that they'll answer this somehow, and give it a resolution but to see how - is what makes us wait for more. Shikawat's betrayal is interesting - it's a 'message' to the viewers that your 'last mistake' to cover up your earlier ones won't be the last one. Jawahar is an interesting character in the show, they not only make him obviously suspicious so that the audience would not be suspicious of him - they have him actually fuck up, and reveal them like twists which makes him actually suspicious. In a whodunnit, the writers and the audience are playing in a loop of 'you'd think that I'd do this, so I'll do this'.

The world of the show is authentic and everything feels so convincing, Aarya's parental family is a different setting, her and Tej's family is a different setting - and all of them seamlessly co-exist - the makers of the show differentiate these two worlds carefully, not only through location, and production design, but also through writing, especially with the usage of colloquial dialogue. If the second season, is again going to be a similar cat and mouse chase between Aarya and the syndicates, I'm not that excited, but I want to see where the characters end up, who they meet and what new internal confllicts they have.