Outlaw Beloved

“The protagonist was actually a character in another story we were narrating to the channel heads and they told us to weave an entire new story around him,” said Shanti Bhushan,writer of the series,who has to his credit other small-screen hits too like Pratigya and Na Aana Is Des…Laado. Bhushan’s Ghazipur roots came in handy to flesh out the plot and characters. “It hurts to hear news of crime and corruption coming from the northern Indian states,particularly when you are away from home. But when this is the order of the day,how can we show stories based in UP that don’t have a criminal or political angle,” says his co-writer,Kamal Pandey.

Members of the team,including actor Ashish Sharma,who plays the main role,were in town to promote the show.

“I was tutored in the language of eastern UP and trained to get the accent right,” says Sharma,a Jaipur native,who has done theatre and films,including Love,Sex aur Dhokha and the forthcoming Citizen and Dillogical.

“This role is like nothing I have done on stage or screen before,so I grabbed it when it came my way,” says the actor,who hoped to soak in as much of the dialect as he could during his visit to Lucknow.