What happens in jail stays in jail

Raj Kundra in a still from UT-69

Have you watched the reality show, Lock Upp, where semi-celeb types, dressed in jail uniforms, live like inmates in a fake prison, competing for a grand prize and audience's pleasure? No, I haven't watched it either.

But guess what, I got invited to participate in its maiden season. Must admit, my eyes did light up a bit by the thought. Mainly because it could make for an interesting journalistic piece on what happens to human behaviour, when forced to live with strangers, like rats in a lab.

Something I've experimented once, for 24 hours, inside the Bigg Boss house. The Lock Upp experience, though, would take about eight weeks of fake incarceration. Which is too long a self-inflicted torture to endure - simply to tell a tale.

Is that what serial entrepreneur Raj Kundra did with his stay in Mumbai's Arthur Road jail, for 63 days - shooting a semi-fictional film UT-69 on it then, starring himself? Yes, and no.

Firstly, Kundra didn't imprison himself by choice. In the way, say, actor Shilpa Shetty did, with the reality show, Big Brother. Shetty won that big British reality show. Kundra and Shetty met thereafter. Kundra was a Londoner.

He helped her navigate the celebrity-endorsement space to cash in on her British celebrity. They subsequently fell in love, and married. We've primarily known Kundra as Bollywood star Shetty's husband since.

That makes him a celebrity. Which is both the best and worst place to be, in the times of social media, with its own judgemental ‘tall poppy syndrome'.

Wherein the public will offer you disproportionate attention and dopamine, with shares and likes, online, for whatever you post. But will equally pull you down so bad, with their blind trolling, if they don't approve of you. It can shatter your mental health, if you aren't Zen enough.

Kundra, at some point, became the ‘Mask Man' in public - covering his face with helmet, like Daft Punk, before the paparazzi, for the humiliation heaped upon him, once he was arrested on charges of producing presumably consensual pornographic content.

Even if he was actually involved (and how are we know to) - what he did is not even illegal for where he comes from. It's like getting arrested for bootlegging in Bihar. Tough luck. Wrong state. That's all.
Also, booked for porn in a country, where Sunny Leone is a superstar. So, tougher luck still.

As Kundra gets jailed - which is supposed to be the legal exception, on such cases; with bail, anyway, the norm - he's stripped naked first.

What follows is a life wholly dehumanised - with random belting for inmates; three-minutes' phone-call per week allowed with family; bullet-proof rotis for food; 246 people packed into a room meant for 45; sleeping, literally, butt-cheek by jowl…

Kundra has debuted as an actor, playing himself, with a bunch of debutants (director, production designer, screenwriter, cinematographer, etc) in the bitter-sweet picture, UT-69, for a prison diary. UT, as in, under-trail. Which is what he was, like everybody else, equally presumed guilty.

Now, I've never met Kundra. I do find him intriguing for the number of times he lands in random trouble - shady business deal, IPL spot-fixing, bitcoin, something or the other.

Why did I watch UT-69, all alone, in an absolutely empty theatre? Well, somebody should. And guess what, I was surprisingly hooked! Why, again?

Because it felt so innocently/viscerally personal - rather than some kinda art-house advocacy docket on human rights, lensed from the distance of essential activism.

Kundra got imprisoned in 2021, during the pandemic. Which isn't too far since the world had been placed under a forced lockdown. What did we essentially hate about the lockdown? That we couldn't be around people. The jail is the opposite scenario.

And the film, like the protagonist, never once looking down at fellow travellers, offers you enough empathy for the lives of others in the room. Which is an apt way to deem anything as art, anyway. This isn't self-centred stuff. Not voyeuristic either.

There is still some joy, little hope, but mostly care, for those who may barely get bail in a system - so terribly loaded against the poor - which takes such pride in the proverbial process being the hellish punishment.

At some point, Kundra suggests everybody should go to jail to realise what it's like, "when you're stripped of all money and status."

That explains his unpretentious movie. Where you also learn how Kundra's former business-partner, actor Sanjay Dutt, once lodged in the same prison, continues to pay cable TV and electricity bills for his former inmates, still.

We've reasons to believe Arthur Road is hardly the worst of Indian jails. No civilised state must commit crimes, especially on under-trials, who they presume have committed crimes themselves. Reality shows, of course, can put you through tests of extreme endurance. You signed up.

Speaking of which, I did watch the opening episode of Lock Upp. Only to check on their loos - heaving a sigh of intense relief, for having said no to the silly show, once I saw that desi style shit-hole in it.

It's the one thing to fear about jails. Watch the western-style commode full of fresh crap in UT-69. Glad I didn't puke in the theatre - not that anybody would've known.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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