Pankaj Tripathi’s next film will be about a man who was apparently dead. Yes, you heard it right Pankaj Tripathi himself will be starring as the apparent “dead” man in his upcoming “Kaagaz”. Releasing on the 15th of January, premiering on Zee5, Kaagaz is a real life story about a man named Lal Bihari Mritak, hailing from Uttar Pradesh, who was apparently declared dead in papers. This movie shows the fight this man fought against a bureaucracy so corrupt that they can declare a very healthy man dead.
The movie directed by Satish Kaushik and produced by Salman Khan shows the life of Lal Bihari, who has been known to be declared dead while was healthy and well and doing his regular business. While going to a government office and applying for something, he came to know that he has been declared dead on paper and that it was his uncle who did this act to take over their ancestral lands which would have otherwise gone to him. From then, it has been a fight of almost 19 years for him to be declared alive and not dead.
In this process he has been known to do various activities that could get the attention from the government and the bureaucrats equally. He added the word “Mritak” after his name which meant that he was dead, he even started signing his name by adding “Late” before his name. there was also a point in time when he went to the widow’s pension office to get the pension that was supposed to come to his wife, if he actually was dead. Later he came to know, it was not just him but several others too who also had been fighting the same issue. He formed an organisation, and named it as the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People.
Though the movie will be shown in a comedic form, one cannot deny how messed up and serious the issue is. The pair of Satish Kaushik and Pankaj Tripathi come together in this movie to fight and show people how the struggle was for this particular man. A perfect example of how corrupt the bureaucracy and the government is and how unserious things are when it comes to the people that they can actually declare people dead. A terrifying activity to be honest, to not have your own identity even when you are alive, because some person sitting in his chair in a government office said to someone, “haan karwa denge” because he was offered something for his “chai paani”.