<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2025/mar/Mayank-Shekhar-op_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="83" />To let you in on a fact about Bihar&mdash;which may well be true for other Indian states&mdash;its villages, presently, are vastly better than its towns, in terms of general quality of life, safety included.&nbsp;
This is certainly true for my ancestral village, Bangaon, in north Bihar, compared to its closest district, Saharsa, and even bigger cities around.&nbsp;
Or, for that matter the fictional village, Dhadakpur&mdash;in the adorably subtle, Amazon Prime Video comedy series, Dupahiya.&nbsp;
Which is where the school principal, Banwari Jha (Gajraj Rao), and family live, and love. If their village was for real&mdash;it wouldn&rsquo;t be far from Bangaon, in the Mithila region, bordering Nepal and Bengal.&nbsp;
Dhadakpur is the only &ldquo;crime-free village&rdquo; in India. Earning it the epithet, &lsquo;Belgium of Bihar&rsquo;! This is ironic.&nbsp;
Given that almost all of popular entertainment/content (movies/series), set in UP-Bihar, tend to be &lsquo;litti westerns&rsquo;&mdash;likewise, surveying guns, gang-wars, cops, and politicians&mdash;with the east of India permanently institutionalised as its Wild West.&nbsp;
Starting from the greatest, Anurag Kashyap&rsquo;s Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), to its hand-me-downs Mirzapur, Jamtara, Khakee, Maharani&hellip; Or Prakash Jha&rsquo;s Gangaajal (2003), Apaharan (2005), before that.
Panchayat (2020), placed in the fictional village, Phulera, probably in Ballia district of north-eastern UP, remains the much loved, notable exception. &nbsp;Only, that by the time you get to the final episode of Panchayat&rsquo;s third season (2024), lathis and dunalis (double-barrel rifles) do make their sufficient appearance, aimed at political rivals, in the open fields.&nbsp;
Even in the fictional sense then, Dhadakpur (of Dupahiya) has a reputation to protect&mdash;for the fact that no crime has been reported in this hamlet of 100 homes, over 24 years plus. Do I know of any such village?&nbsp;
I have visited Shani Shingnapur, off Ahmednagar, in Maharashtra, once. Which (I hope still) takes pride in their shops/homes/establishments bearing no locks on their doors. In fact, no doors at all; only frames, to ensure stray animals don&rsquo;t step in. Thievery/robbery being out of the question.&nbsp;
For Dupahiya&rsquo;s creators-writers Avinash Dwivedi and Chirag Garg, the point of a zero-crime village was to up the stakes, when a crime (however ordinary) does take place in their story.&nbsp;
Avinash says, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s while we were researching, thereafter, that we came across an article about a DCP (police official) in Bihar, mentioning a village, where no FIRs had ever been filed.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Chirag adds, &ldquo;This can happen among tribal populations, where crime-related issues tend to get solved within [the community].&rdquo;
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2025/mar/Salona-Bains_e.jpg" alt="(Clockwise from top left) Salona Bains Joshi, Shubh Shivdasani, Chirag Garg and Avinash Dwivedi" width="1280" height="720" /> (Clockwise from top left) Salona Bains Joshi, Shubh Shivdasani, Chirag Garg and Avinash Dwivedi
Besides Chirag (from Alwar, Rajasthan) and Avinash (from Gorakhpur, UP), I spoke to the creator-producer-showrunners of Dupahiya, i.e. Shubh Shivdasani and Salona Bains Joshi. None of whom are from Bihar.&nbsp;
As for practically everyone from the principal cast: Gajraj is from Rajasthan. Lapataa Ladies&rsquo; lead Sparsh Shrivastava, absolutely sensational as Gajraj&rsquo;s son, Bhugol Jha, is also from Rajasthan.&nbsp;
Shivani Raghuvanshi (from Delhi) plays the daughter. Yashpal Sharma (Hissar, Haryana) is the cop. Renuka Shahane (Mumbai) is Dhadakpur&rsquo;s headwoman&hellip;&nbsp;
If anything, Renuka, who&rsquo;s lovely as always, I felt, hardly gets the local twang bang-on. But then again, if one were to go authentic&mdash;Dupahiya should&rsquo;ve ideally been in the Maithili language.
Unsure how many would instantly watch it. I noticed the common, local word &lsquo;thetthar&rsquo; for thick-skinned on the screen. The translation read, coward. So be it.&nbsp;
As creator Shubh puts it, &ldquo;We wished to get the milieu [of such an imagined village] right; without getting too specific, and while remaining accessible to a pan-Indian audience.&rdquo;&nbsp;
The brief in their heads was the OTT content-category, Young Adult. It&rsquo;s not that Gen Z only live in cities. Almost 70 per cent of India lives in villages. Barely any to be seen on the mainstream screen.&nbsp;
Hence, remarkable, how Dupahiya beautifully/entertainingly captures the wider&mdash;but more specifically the wedding&mdash;culture of rural Bihar, including its by-lanes (shot around Orccha in Madhya Pradesh).&nbsp;
What with the bus-load of baraatis, the nagin plus launda dance. Down to the motorcycle (&lsquo;dupahiya&rsquo;), for top dowry&mdash;that gets stolen.&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s the script&rsquo;s perfect MacGuffin. As in, the object/event that triggers the comic-thriller plot, keeping it in motion, while the story gently surveys the lives of others, going about their day, where it feels like little happens, but a lot does. &nbsp;
I first caught Dupahiya casually, as an inoffensive, warm, comfort watch, that we so often seek for weekend TV, without much registering in our heads. The last two-three episodes were, however, excellent!
Which is when I watched it all over again, simply to observe its delicate take on life, love, pain-points, such as India&rsquo;s &lsquo;pigmentation&rsquo; (light/dark skin) problem. Even dowry that, in a crime-free village, is obviously not even perceived as wrong.&nbsp;
My favourite takeaway/truth-bomb from the show is when a young girl makes a distinction between urban and rural life, as told to her by the mother (Renuka): &ldquo;Happiness and sorrow are both yours alone, in a city.&nbsp; Whereas, in a village, they get shared equally, among all.&rdquo;
The flip-side of this, as the female lead (Shivani) explains, in a later episode, for why life in the &lsquo;dehaat&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t suit her: &ldquo;Here, for anything you do or don&rsquo;t [the refrain is], &lsquo;Chaar log kya kahenga? (What&rsquo;ll people say?)&rsquo;. In the city, those four people say nothing!&rdquo; Enough said.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.&nbsp; He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.
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Almost 70 percent Indians live in villages. Almost none in mainstream series. Gen Z comedy, Dupahiya, addresses misbalance beautifully

Brilliance in the ‘Belgium of Bihar’!

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Brilliance in the ‘Belgium of Bihar’!

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