Karma has been given great importance in Indian culture. It is said that a person has to suffer the consequences of his deeds in this very birth. The results of good deeds are good and the results of bad deeds are bad.
Karma Talwar also believes in this philosophy and itself becomes the medium for realizing it. She sets out to destroy those who wronged her family. Karma Talwar is the heroine of the Disney Plus Hotstar series Karma Calling. This series is the Indian adaptation of the American thriller show Revenge. Ruchi Narayan adapted and directed the series from an Indian perspective.
Karma Calling focuses on Karma Talwar aka Ambika Mehra (Namrata Sheth). When Karma is eight years old, her honest father Satyajit Mehra (Rohit Roy) gets caught in a Rs 3000 crore bank scam perpetrated by the ultra-rich Kothari family of Alibaug. Satyajeet is jailed and everyone is conspiring to prove him guilty in the court. Satyajeet dies in jail while serving his sentence.
Ambika is sent to an orphanage, where she is made to believe that her father is a demon who has destroyed thousands of lives. Ambika also thinks the same until she faces the truth. How does Ambika plan to take revenge from the powerful and rich Kothari family? How does she ruin every person by hatching conspiracies according to his profession? How does Indrani enter the elite circle of Kothari (Raveena Tandon)?
Ruchi Narayan has divided this story into seven episodes. The duration of each episode is on average 40 minutes. The story of the original series Revenge is written by Mike Kelly and Joe Fazio, adapted by Ruchi. The dialogues of the series have been written by Purva Naresh. The good thing is that when the heroine Karma talks about the accounting of deeds in her voiceover, she does not call the deed as ‘karma’.
Karma Calling has a revenge story as well as a love triangle. Behind the ostentatious smiling faces and shining dresses of the elite class lies emptiness and darkness. There is betrayal behind the relationship celebrating its 25th wedding anniversary. There is a shameless desire to maintain one’s influence and influence through charity parties and fraud. These are agreements made without conscience for the sake of profit.
The series combines flashbacks with the present, revealing events from Karma’s past that have inspired her to seek revenge. The secret of the relationship between Ambika’s father Satyajit Mehra and Indrani Kothari is also in the past.
Ruchi Narayan has taken care to give it Indian social sensibility in the adaptation. For this, Alibaug near Mumbai has been chosen as the story land, where Indrani Kothari is the queen of the elite class. The series mainly revolves around Indrani’s lifestyle and the conspiracies of Ambika i.e. Karma.
The series starts with the wedding scenes of Indrani’s son Ahaan (Varun Sood) and Karma and the first twist comes when Ahaan is murdered on the beach before the wedding ceremony can be completed. After this, the series goes into the past and the story starts from the day when Ambika i.e. Karma comes to live in the neighborhood of Kothari Mansion in Alibaug with a completely new identity. For this he has made proper preparations.
She ruins property management company owner Nikhil Sethia (Mohan Kapoor) by causing losses in the stock market, Rajya Sabha MP Muzammil Saeed (Shataf Figaar) by implicating him in a sex scandal and spiritual guru healer Daya Maa (Alpana Booch). , A video got leaked.
Karma’s intentions become clear as soon as the series begins, but the way she kills her enemies one by one by trapping them in their own trap makes the story interesting. Indrani’s friend and Kaushal’s love interest Dolly Bhatia (Walusha D’Souza) is also on Karma’s target. All of them were responsible in some way or the other for the ruin of Ambika-Satyajit.
In the last episode, the truth about Karma’s past is revealed, which is going to affect her revenge mission. Indrani Kothari’s former security officer Sameer (Vikramjeet Virk) traces her past. This shows that the second season is going to be very interesting.
Due to limited locations, Karma Calling is a soap opera-style series, reminiscent of TV family dramas. However, it has a faster pace, which makes it less boring and makes the series entertaining.
Even if there is some hindrance, the twist of the next scene compensates for it. The scene of the Karva Chauth party, in which Indrani along with her husband Kaushal goes to the sky in a helicopter to see the moon, looks interesting, but there is a big twist here too.
Raveena Tandon made her OTT debut with the Netflix series Aranyak, in which she played the role of a police officer. Raveena’s character Indrani in Karma Calling is a top heroine of the 90s, who marries a big businessman Kaushal Kothari. Rohit Roy as Satyajit is seen only in flashbacks, when Karma recalls the atrocities committed by her father through letters. These scenes shown in sepia color tone are emotional.
Viraf Patel provides some comic relief in the role of Jane Khan, a tech company owner who is a key part of Karma’s revenge plan. Some other important characters are played by Vikramjit Virk, Amy Ella, Devangshi Sen. Karma Calling is not a series that can be called a game changer, but it can be watched for its twists and turns in its plot.