Northeast has now started appearing on OTT platforms, but it will still take time to see its real flavor.
Ultimately North-East was successful in reaching the screen. It is a different matter that there is a shadow of doubt on this now. This is what one feels after watching a recent web series. It begins with the severed head of a Naga leader being found in a guest house in Delhi. The chain of investigation reaches Nagaland. The second series is in which a gang of smugglers come to the capital from ‘the East’. This gang buys and sells women. Wherever the blasts take place in films or series, intelligence officers are seen running here and there in Nagaland and Arunachal to stop any such conspiracy which may be suspected to be supported by China.
The location may change to Dimapur, Kohima, or some unknown border town, but the atmosphere remains the same. The North-East appears only after a major disturbance in the story. Take a look at three famous OTT franchise series. Paatal Lok (2020), Delhi Crime (2019) and The Family Man (2019). The Northeast has appeared like this in everything. One can immediately be satisfied that even if late, at least these regions are visible in the mainstream, because for decades Hindi cinema either considered this region as a region with beautiful views or saw it as a threat to security. Even when a biopic was made on a personality like Mary Kom, her role was played by a famous Bollywood heroine. In fact, even his voice was reinvented in the studio.
If we look at these, the streaming platform broke this inertia a bit. Paatal Lok 2 has characters who speak Naga and Assamese. Unlike any Bollywood film, it has a local cast and several episodes have been shot in Delhi and rural Nagaland. Delhi Crime 3 depicts an interstate trafficking network that extends from the Northeast to Haryana. The Family Man 3 features militant groups from Nagaland. During promotions of the series, the cast said they wanted “justice” for the part of India that was portrayed unfairly by mainstream cinema.
The satisfaction for the audience here is that at least now they are visible. Many people from the North-East also find it strange that their identity is the same to people outside. Due to this, the thrill of hearing their mother tongue also goes away. The way of showing the North-Eastern states is the same. This state is not shown like any normal part of the country. Where, be it everyday work, boredom, romance or small-town hustle and bustle or happiness. Rather it appears as a threat. Where there is extremism, smuggling and espionage. Even though this area is no longer missing from films or series, it still appears to be under surveillance.
Hindi cinema’s relationship with the Northeast has always oscillated between distance and discomfort. For many years the North-East remained marginalized in cinema. But OTT wanted something new every day. New location, new language, new environment. In such a situation, when the writer left the worn-out streets of Mumbai-Delhi in search of unknown land for crime and political thrillers, his eyes fell on the North-East, which has a long and difficult history with other Indian states. These states were favorable for them in every respect. The politics here was complex, there was no clarity in identity, apart from this there were many limitless possibilities here.
Paatal Lok 2 was the first big show to base the entire story on this state. The season begins with the murder of Jonathan Thom (Kaguirong Gommei), a Naga politician who had come to Delhi for a business summit, who is brutally beheaded. Then gradually the investigation takes the story to the villages of Nagaland, ceasefire camps and corporate boardrooms. There is clever skill in its writing. A corpse connects the complacent center of Delhi to a periphery that has rarely attempted to be understood.
In this, an effort to avoid old mistakes is also clearly visible. The characters speak local languages instead of speaking Hindi in the usual North-Eastern style. This season gives writers a frame that can be easily reused. Nagaland seems like a landscape of old wounds and armed groups. But to tell the story, the incidents are those which the Mumbai-Delhi audience already knows, police files, interrogation rooms, corporate memos, development talks. The crux of the conflict is not whether Nagaland should decide its own future, but whether its discontent will translate into business summits and peace agreements or into ‘senseless’ violence that could destabilize the country.
Manoj Bajpayee in Family Man
Coming to the North-Eastern state makes it easier to tell the story. As the map moves east, the familiar framework of crime thriller, corpses, investigation and conspiracy remains intact but in a new environment. That’s why Paatal Lok 2 becomes the blueprint, signaling to other creators that they too can head north, provided they have a case file. This pattern does not stop here. Delhi Crime 3 and The Family Man 3 are not exact copies of Paatal Lok 3, but the structure of both is very similar to it.
In Delhi Crime 3, Vartika Chaturvedi’s (Shefali Shah) team uncovers a human trafficking ring spanning from the Northeast via Delhi to Haryana. The Family Man 3 goes even further. The blasts in the North-East have become a threat to the Prime Minister’s peace agenda. Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee) travels to Nagaland to convince an experienced rebel leader to maintain the agreement, while a young commander prepares to ruin everything. Chinese money is coming through back routes. The show focuses on the cracks within the rebel groups and does not pretend that Delhi’s hands are clean. Yet the narrative remains the same: the Northeast is a region open to interference from outside forces, where national security and local politics intersect.
Viewed in isolation, this series appears nuanced and at times deeply empathetic. Seen together, they accomplish a quiet, but piercing process. These teach the audience to connect the incidents in the Northeast with the emergency. Crime, extremism and conspiracy become natural entry points. Everyday life falls outside this scope.
Once one gets used to it, it narrows the imagination, like a love story in Kohima that doesn’t revolve around the army or an underground group, a family drama set in Aizawl that deals with migration or faith rather than surveillance. An office in Guwahati, where there are talks about career, friendship or local politics. But it becomes difficult to present them, because there is no thrill in it, there is no danger in it. These are simple stories. ‘Ordinary’ is a word which is rarely shown on screen in association with this region.
Talk to the locals about these shows. Two emotions run together in them. On one hand he is relieved that his area is being shown, on the other hand there is a never ending tension in his chest.
For the older generation raised on Doordarshan and mainstream Bollywood, the relief is real. To see a Naga or Mizo actor in a major serial in which their familiar language is not ridiculed or to recognize a village that does not look like a picture postcard. “At least now they know we exist,” says Muana, a retired teacher from Aizawl. For years, we were just a “hill” in the background. In comparison to them, today’s generation is more outspoken. Soboinla, a college student in Shillong, Nagaland, joked that this is the first time that North-Eastern characters are “doing something other than being roommates with weird accents in a hostel in Bombay.”
On the condition of anonymity, a research student from Kohima says, “Why do we come into the story only when there is a gun on the table?” While the worry is that her classmates or colleagues who have never come here or have never come here, take the show as a shortcut to understanding them after watching it. If the first picture of Nagaland is of beheaded bodies, bomb explosions and secret meetings between rebels and foreign masters, then it cannot be imagined that later on you will see these states as a place of libraries, football tournaments, weddings and old age homes. In conversation, Soboyenla says of Marke, “It is not like hell here, understand?”
The people involved in the creation of these stories are also aware of how sharp their edge is. Shome, who plays Meghna Barua in Paatal Lok 2, was worried that the wrong choice of language or body language could reinforce the very misrepresentations she opposes. This kind of concern shows care. It is also an acknowledgment that the framework within which these stories are being told is already one-sided and individual efforts can only go so far in countering this.
At the moment, an actor is trying to get the tone right, a writer is struggling for context, a viewer is patiently explaining to friends that his house is not as shown in the series. Imagine, if the camera reached there without the case file. For this, there is no need for a ban on thrillers, nor any requirement for happy stories. What it requires, hard, is to see the Northeast as a place with its own center and not a stage on which Delhi’s nerves are tested.
The beginnings exist, in short films and series. Where an attempt is made to dwell on friendship, migration, food, music and memory. These rarely reach the general audience. These create another horizon, where a character from Kohima or Imphal can be ordinary, can be angry, can love, can fail in a job without having to bear the burden of any struggle.
The real test for mainstream OTT is courage, not imagination. Can it portray Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram or Meghalaya in a way that is not immediately understood as a threat or tragedy? Can it place extremism and everyday life within the same framework, without turning one into a backdrop and the other a spectacle? Could it treat the people in the area as people whose fears and desires are not already covered in someone else’s security briefing, rather than simply as sources, suspects or guides? These questions go far beyond any one title. Paatal Lok 2, Delhi Crime 3 and The Family Man 3 are important not because they are villains, but because they are the turning point where the Northeast could no longer be kept off the streaming map. He opened a door that had been closed for decades. The only danger is that this door opens only into the interrogation room. There is more interesting work ahead. To tell stories in which the Northeast is not just seen, but can also be seen.
