Gripping with the right dose of sentimentality

OVERING a span of some of the most crucial months around India’s independence — June 1947 to January 1948 — the second season of Freedom at Midnight largely unfolds from the perspective of Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

- BH HARSH

In that light, it’s very easy to paint Jinnah’s figure as a bitter antagonist.And yet, somewhere in the opening episode, there is a searing moment when Jinnah realises the true cost of fighting for his own nation. There is a sense of melancholy, as the old man absorbs the shock and the sense of unexpected loss amidst all the gains.

In this moment, as in many others, Freedom at Midnight underlines why it isa cut apart from the rest. It knows what it means to humanise characters. Tt also recognises the difference between humanising and empathising. In these times riddled with polarising views, when it’s easy and much more convenient to go for a black-and-white palette, the series sticks to the grey and its many shades.

But that’s not all. Freedom at Midnight also gets the basics right. There is a clean sense of structure in the seven-episode narrative. The dramatic stakes only get higher with each successive episode. The dialogues succinctly capture the pathos of a nation in turmoil. The use of chapters bewilders you at first, but makes sense when you think of the scale on which Nehru and Patel were operating to get things in order — where barriers often came in a queue.