It is a peaceful evening.

An unassuming box television is playing a pleasant soap opera on Star

Plus, occupying the centre of attention in a humble home until suddenly, bullets strike like
thunder on the TV and the wall behind it. The opening credits continue to roll on senselessly.

Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 1), begins to tell the tale of three generations across two families -
the Khans and Qureshis, who are inhabitants of the town of Wasseypur in colonial Bengal. Both
families sustain themselves through crime and murder, acting as clinically as mercenaries in
order to survive.

Though the plot is centred around the sickly intertwined stories of the Khans and Qureshis, it is
finely defined by its characters as individuals. Wasseypur is dominated by the Qureshis, who
are led by Sultana Qureshi, the merciless dacoit who effectively rules the town. The seeds of
hatred are sown by the actions of Shahid Khan, a lesser man in Wasseypur who decides to loot
trains by posing as Sultana, who then banishes him for doing so.

The turn of independence finds Shahid Khan working in the coal mines of Dhanbad, where he
establishes his family’s legacy in organised crime. Sardar Khan succeeds Shahid Khan, led by
the sole purpose of avenging his father’s death, and Faizal and Danish Khan succeed Sardar,
consumed by the same bloodlust. The story unfurls like an infinitely recurring nightmare, each
generation reminiscent of the one before it. Depravity, enterprise, rabid ambition - all the Khans
possess these traits in varying degrees and distinct styles of expression, like family heirlooms
that take on a new tint with each cycle.

Mired in the madness of mistresses, morality and malice, Gangs of Wasseypur conveys
threadbare one truth: In the progression from an India colonised to independent, wretchedly
rural to callously urbanising, the institution of the family is an anchor in the throes of (internal
and external) changes. Somewhere at the heart of Sardar Khan’s colourful infidelities, Ramadhir
Singh’s merry meddling and the cries of innumerable newborns, is a family unflinching. Faizal
and Danish pledge loyalty to their absent father, who phases in and out of their life as he
pleases, Nagma, his wife, continues to hold herself to the highest standards of fidelity (even in
terms of aiding his escapes from criminal conviction) and his Hindu mistress, despised by Faizal
and Danish, grows from coy love interest to imposing force in Sardar’s actions (and hence the
family’s).

The Qureshis diversify in their pursuits of manslaughter as butchers by profession and as

political pawns of the MLA Ramadhir Singh but still, their hearts throb only to reinforce the
legacy they were born to. The superiority that set Sultana Daku and the Qureshi clan above
everyone else in Wasseypur continues to drive Ehsaan and Sultan, who ultimately twist it into
uglier forms as the years pass.

At several points through the movie, one wonders whether the idea of family really seems fickle
or faithful, whether it is the means to manipulate or the origin that breeds manipulation. Kane
and Abel, Samson and Delilah, the Montagues and the Capulets - it seems this nature of the
family is an endless circle of questioning that mankind will always speculate at.
(differential intimacies vala part)

In terms of the writing and filmmaking, director Anurag Kashyap invokes the likes of Eli Wallach
and Martin Scorsese from their work in westerns and Italian mafia plots, focusing on the central
role that intra and inter family dynamics play in the functioning of mafias and marauders. One
could draw quite plausible parallels between Don Vito Corleone and Shahid Khan.

Gangs of Wasseypur closely maps the relationship of family identity and dynamics with the
circumstances that shape it at several different levels through a tale of loss, loyalty and
lawlessness.