“Scam 1992” gave us the Hansal Mehta-directed Harshad Mehta story, and the 2020 show stays high on the best Indian web series pole:
Now it’s the turn of stamp-paper counterfeiter Abdul Karim Telgi in “Scam 2003”, based on Sanjay Singh’s book ‘Telgi Scam: Reporter’s Ki Diary’, directed by Tushar Hiranandani, and show-run by Hansal Mehta.
Telgi was caught, and he died in jail, but his ‘daring toh karna padega darling’ schemes, which gave him unimaginable returns, showed up the holes in the ‘system’ which rules us, a system that keeps the common man out of power-and-wealth circles.
About “Scam: 2003”– The Telgi story
Both Mehta and Telgi came from nothing, and got everything—even if briefly– and that’s why there’s so much admiration and sympathy for these crooks, even now, years after their passing.
Though comparisons are odious, this new series is sure to be held up against the first one, which was an acute, insightful portrait of pre-liberalisation India, and how the Big Bull unerringly found all the soft spots to press on his heady journey to the very top of the stock market.
Pratik Gandhi, as Harshad Mehta, had zing, and the whole thing was done most entertainingly.
Stamp papers are no way as exciting as actual currency, which the charismatic Harshad was using to manipulate and buy out, nor is the mastermind behind the stamp-paper scam, a fruit seller from Karnataka whose ambition knows no bounds.
And that’s the challenge, right there, in front of the makers: how do you make this one as entertaining as the previous one when both the main protagonist and his cohorts–
an unending series of complicit cops and corrupt netas, who were happy to dip their avaricious hands into Telgi’s ‘behti ganga’– are as tawdry as the crime they are pulling off?
Gagan Dev Riar as Telgi is terrific, his body language determinedly ordinary—a face like millions in the crowd, bush-shirt bulging over a protruding stomach– which hides a razor-sharp mind always working on how to get ahead.
“Paisa kamaana nahin hai, banana hai” (I don’t want to earn money, but make it) told everyone around him that even in the early days, his friends and partners put him aside, others, including his wife and lover put him aside. Daughter and her parents, please trust him and leave him alone.
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