Gangs of Puri: A New Hope For Odia OTTs

Gangs of Puri: A New Hope For Odia OTTs

There has been a long debate over the last few years about Odia content on digital platforms, especially for OTTs. Thankfully, the new generation of filmmakers are now trying to experiment and come up with more updated content. Although there has been some disappointment, the recently released series ‘Gangs of Puri’ has created hope among Odia content consumers. The series has been streaming on Odia OTT ‘Kancha Lanka’ since June 18 this year and is getting rave reviews. 

Directed by Anupam Patnaik and Jagdish Mishra, the series has been produced by Technoart Productionz, the digital wing of Amiya Patnaik Productions. The cast includes actors like KK (Krishna Kar), Aman, Choudhury Jayprakash Das, Hara Rath, Rabi Mishra, Ankita Mohanty, Bhakti, Pranab Rath, Udit Guru and several others.

The series is about various gangs who try to control the town of Puri for their own benefit. Legal and Illegal, holiness and unholiness, both co-exist in the series side-by-side. It is an action-packed saga that traces the journey of the different crime cartels in the bylanes of Puri which involves greedy land mafias, shrewd politicians, cold blooded gangsters in rivalry and fight for dominance. Here politicians control the gangsters and violence is considered normal. The politicians use the gangsters for their own benefits and when it suits them, they make compromises between the gangs. But everyone doesn’t accept the treaties. It’s not only about controlling Puri, but about getting revenge; blood for blood is the only way for them. The series has all the elements of Puri like bhanga, pangata, abadha, raga pani, pokhari pani, jaga ghara, akhada, kusthi, etc. One can totally get a feel of Puri while watching the series.

Talking about choosing Puri as the base for the story, Anupam said to My City Links, “While we were planning to make a project on the theme of crime, we had three options, Kendrapara, Puri and Ganjam. But the unique cultural ambience and the dialect of Puri motivated us to choose it. I am personally very fascinated with the town.”

“Although Puri is famous for the lord of the universe Jagannath, there are several other things we have heard about the city from our childhood days. So we wanted to do a fiction inspired from some real events. We have shot at three locations, Bhubaneswar (Old Town), Puri and Bhringarpur,” he added.

The series begins with a Bengali hotelier, who approaches the local MLA, Raja Bahinipati, with a proposal to set up a hotel in the fisherman’s village by displacing the locals. But their plan comes to a stand-still when they find out that the place comes under the so-called ‘jurisdiction’ of the local sahi crime lord aka Robinhood of Puri, Babu Jena. This ignites an age-old rivalry and soon, a bloody feud breaks out between the local gangs of Babu Jena, Nilu, and Loka Nana. Amid the local tussles, a regular Puri guy, Shiva, accidentally gets involved in the affairs of the underworld and rises to prominence as the new ‘Nana’. But he soon realizes that in order to be the ‘Nana’ (Don), you have to take a ‘Dana’ (bullet). 

Adding more about the story, Co-founder and Chairman of ‘Kanccha Lannka’, Akshay Kumar Parija said, “This series gives fresh insight into gangster life in Odisha. I feel this is the sort of content that the Odia entertainment industry needs to explore more, and I am glad that ‘Kanccha Lannka’ is catering to this demand so well.”

“The series pushes the envelope in terms of quality of cinematic storytelling and narrative techniques. True to the promise, the platform continues to dish out novel content for Odia entertainment lovers.” Parija added.

There are few people who are complaining about the name being copied from ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’. Anupam said, “It’s true that while making a project on gangs, films like ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ and series like ‘Mirzapur’ and ‘Sacred Games’ are very big inspirations for us. But those who are complaining about the name and thinking that it might be a copy of that, we want to tell them that before ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ there are films like ‘Gangs of New York’ having ‘Gangs of’ in the beginning. It’s catchy and simple, that’s the reason behind such a title and nothing else.”

Although this series is 18+, the team has tried to focus on the drama part of it rather than the bold and crime scenes. It does not have intense crime or bold scenes like we may witness in any crime series these days. The team has done it in a very smart way, which also seems great with the flow of the story. The 90s was the time when the business in Puri was blooming and mostly Bengali businessmen were eager to invest. So they have tried to create that 90s era of Puri, which shows the ways they used to live and how the culture was always there with them.

Spending about one and half years in the pre-production only, the team had several auditions and workshops which made this project come out so good. The casting includes finger countable numbers of actors who hail from Puri, hats off to the rest who have given their best in establishing their character as a person belonging to the town. Anupam said, “We are thankful to all the actors who have completely surrendered to us and did it with full confidence and dedication. 90% of our cast is from the Drama department of the Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya. 

“With the great response we are very happy. If it grows with time and we get things at their right place, then definitely we will move forward for the second season very soon,” he hoped.

Overwhelmed with the response KK said, “In my 14 years of career, I have done 38 films, 13 serials and some music videos, but this series has given me the maximum appreciation till date. The challenge in this series was to become someone else with proper dialect and body language. I must thank my presenters in this series Anupam, Jagdish and Pranab, who have made it easier for me to play the character ‘Babu Jena’. I have some more OTT contents in the pipeline and am so excited to share about them in the near future.”

“The day you become an actor, you should forget what people will think about you and your work. Your job is to focus on the script and the character you are playing,” he added when asked about the slangs used in the series.

When asked about taking up the challenge of doing a character like ‘Nilu’ in the series, one of the finest actors of O-town, Hara Rath said, “As an artist I always try my best to make my character better with a lot of homework. If our audience loves the character I have played in the series, then I would say it’s the blessings of lord Jagannath. Puri is one of my favorite places and I do have quite good friends there. When Anupam told me that I am going to play a Puri guy and need to work on the local language, I started talking with my friends from the town for hours to learn the accent and the language. After a few days when I called him up, I started talking like a regular Puri guy. He was surprised and became very happy knowing about my preparation.”

While cinematography has been done by Deepak Kumar, the story has been written by Pranab Rath, Amit Dash and Jagdish Mishra. Ashish Pradhan has handled the background score and the music, sound design has been done by Shakti Swaroop Dwibedy, the sync sound has been done by Chandrasekhar Sharma and edited by Rashmi Ranjan Dash.