Kankhajura: Twisted, Deliciously Dark, Deliciously Vile.

Kankhajura: Twisted, Deliciously Dark, Deliciously Vile.

In one scene, Max (played by Mohit Raina) describes his younger brother who has returned from 14 years of pension as an innocent yet dangerous person.

I think that's the perfect description of a twisted character, aptly played by Roshan Mathew in Chandan Arora's re-imagination of the acclaimed and award-winning Israeli web series, ‘Magpie’.

‘KanKhajura’, which means a Centipede, symbolizes an unpredictable personality powered with cleverness and helpfulness - Much like Roshan’s Ashu whose obsession for his elder brother forays into dark alleys of twisted games and manipulations, while he also doubles up as a police informant.

Max and Ashu, are like the two sides of the same coin but have evolved after a tragic incident changed their destiny , much in favour of the former.

Ashu who returns to lead a normal life after long years of captivity falls short of his brother's affection who is on his dream path of building a career in realty in Mapusa, Goa.

 

Their dark pasts collide, the grudges and grievances poke out with their ugly head while Max manipulates his way through the dirty mafia with his childhood besties Shardul and Pedru, played by Mahesh Krishna Shetty and Ninad Kamat.

 

Ashu, on the other hand, blinded by his own devotion towards his brother tries to eliminate Max's hindrances in the project, raising the stakes in the game, getting beaten and bruised, and finding little solace in gender-transformed Amay-turned-Amiee (played by Trinetra Haldar).

Unfolding with an unflinching intensity and intrigue in the heartland of Goa, ‘KanKhajura’ keeps you gripped with its dirty, dubious dealings. The world that director Chandan Arora, who co-wrote the 8-part series with Sandeep Jain, presents is deliciously dark and unpleasant - where characters, so layered and complex, are driven by ambitions, money and motives.

With a calm face stuck between unruly curls, an unkempt beard and truckload of unhinged ideas running in his mind, Roshan Mathew plunges deep into the skeleton of an unstable, stuttering man. Arora's articulation of Ashu - a man so fragile, yet fatal is the fleshy highpoint of ‘KanKhajura’. Mathew's approach to his character juxtaposed against a pristine, and the under-explored vignettes of Goa under the immaculate lens of Rajeev Ravi glosses over some deficiencies in the delivery of the narrative.

Mohit Raina brings in a brooding restraint to Max - a calm exterior creates a cocoon over this exploitative, bullying traits. His dynamics with Nisha( played by Sara Jane Dias) and his friends-cum-partners exhibits the well-observed shrewdness in his character.

In ‘KanKhajura’, the women are more straight-forward humans - be it the powerful lady mobster figure, Mrs Deshmukh (Usha Nadkarni), the cop Leela Naik (Heeba Shah) who utilizes Ashu for her work or Nisha and Amiee, until they are manipulated by the men.

Blessed with precise editing, a powerful lived-in milieu and striking Goan dialect, it didn't stop me from noticing and appreciating the culinary nuances imbibed in its niche Cuisine - crab, vindaloo and sorak curry.

 

---

---