Salt City Is Well Worth Your Time Attention & Affection

Salt City (SonyLIV, 7 episodes)

Directed  by Rishab Anupam Sahay

Rating: ****

With its top-heavy  cast that reads like  a who’s who of  the  OTT platform, Salt City could  have easily toppled  over . Much to our relief , Salt City stays  on  its feet  for almost all of its seven  episodes, giving us  a  dysfunctional family  . But  as that wise  writer  told us, every family has its own tragedy.So who is  dysfunctional?

The Bajpai family travels with us  to a heartbreaking revelation at the end. This is the second series this week  after  Amazon’s Suzhal  in  Tamil to address sexual  abuse. In Salt City two very  fine actresses Navni Parihar and Nivedita Bhattacharya get together to discuss this  troublesome issue.

“How long are we going to let this(sex crimes) happen right under our nose?” Navnee asks.

Nivedita listens. We  listen.

Salt City gets  our attention.Outwardly  it  may seem  like  one more dysfunctional  family. But what  this series tells  us  is, there is no dysfunctional family. That every family  and its problems  are distinct. The  story of  the Bajpai family  capitalizes  on  the fund of acting talent at  their disposal.

Piyush Mishra  gives his  all to the  role of the  family head watching his dream team fall apart as one  after  the other his children move away.There is  the youngest son Saurav(Divyendu Sharma) who  is  to the Bajpai family what Cordelia was  to  King Lear. Saurav may not be  politically correct. But his heart is  in the right place and  though  outwardly he  keeps blundering in public Saurav has more integrity than the Bajpais’ other  children.

There  is a great deal  of  sincerity in  the  conceptualization  and  portrayal  of the  characters. However  the ending could have  been less gloomy. We are left  looking at a family that seemed  happy at the beginning but is are now splintered and  despondent.