Directed by Gopi Puthran and Manan Rawat, I have to say that Mandala Murders is not a very convincing watch, especially when it comes to the sci-fi aspects of the narrative. With the budget they had, and the kind of prolific star cast they could afford, I believe they could have done a much better job. The problem with Mandala Murders was that, at times, the narrative seemed pretentious, and the impact that it could have had was diluted by certain creative choices the creators made. Yes, the premise had tons of potential, but it was totally wasted because of the lack of authenticity backed by strong writing. Long gone are the days when you could have fooled the audience with cheap gimmicks. I think that they had all the opportunity to create an impactful and entertaining series that was unique in its own way, but certain mediocre creative choices didn’t let them do that. So, let’s find out what happened in the series and if we can make sense of it.
Spoiler Alert
Why did Vikram Singh come back to Charandaspur?
Vikram Singh, who worked as a police officer in Delhi, came back to his village with his father after a really long time. Vikram’s life had not been easy, and things had happened in the past from which he could never move on. Vikram’s brother, back in the day, had gotten gravely injured after they’d met with an accident. His condition was very critical, and then one day, Vikram’s mother ran away with him from the hospital. Vikram’s mother, Vasudha, believed that if she got the blessing of a mysterious priest who stayed in the middle of the Varuna forest, then her son’s life would be saved. Later, his brother’s body was found near the Varuna forest, but Vasudha was nowhere to be found. Vikram always believed that she was out there somewhere, and if his father would have looked for her properly, she would probably have been found. Vikram’s girlfriend, Kavita, was in a coma after a few goons attacked Vikram and her, as they had some compromising intel on the telecom minister, Sumer Rana. All of a sudden, Vikram’s entire life had turned upside down. He had great difficulty in accepting his past and trying to build a life together with Kavita. And the moment he thought that his life would come back on track, another tragedy happened, and she went into a coma. Vikram knew that he needed answers, and that unless he solved the mystery of what had happened to his mother, he wouldn’t be able to live in peace. When Vikram came back to his village, Charandaspur, he met his childhood friend Pramod Sahni. Together, they decided to find what had happened to Vasudha and just not leave everything up to fate. Little did they know that that would trap them in a kind of maze from which it would be impossible to escape.
What did Jimmy Khan reveal about the murders?
There was a guy named Abhishek Sahay who was traveling together with Vikram and his father to Charandaspur on the same train. Since he was a photographer, he was hired by a local politician named Ananya Bharadwaj to dig up dirt on Sujay and Vijay, two brothers who belonged to the opposition party. Abhishek clicked pictures of them, and then a day later, his dismembered body, without a torso, was found floating in the river. People obviously thought that Sujay and Vijay had had something to do with it, but that was not the case. Before the town could get over the death of the photographer, Sujay and Vijay were also found dead in the Varuna forest. They had gone there to ask for blessings from the same mysterious religious leader who dwelled in a cave in the forest, but then something unprecedented happened. An individual clad in black from head to toe came there and killed them by cutting their opposing arms. The people asking for a blessing had to sacrifice their thumb, by placing it in a device that looked like a transistor. They also needed to put a coin in the device that had very unique engravings on it.
Rea Thomas, who was in the Central Investigation Bureau, was given charge of the case and sent to Charandaspur to investigate the matter. A local priest named Shastri Ji came to meet Rea and told her upfront that he was the next target of the masked murderer. Rea didn’t understand how he could be so sure, but the man said that he’d studied the world of shadows, and he knew that the next target was a shaunak, i.e., a teacher. Shastri Ji was not completely wrong, as the killer came to his house, and we came to know that his wife, Kalindi, was the real target, not him. Though he became collateral damage, it was his wife whose head was severed from her body and taken away by the killer. Rea was a little petrified, and it was difficult for her to understand how all those speculations made by Shastri Ji could be true. Meanwhile, Vikram, who had been trying to locate his mother, believed that the murders had something to do with his mother’s disappearance. Shastri Ji, before passing away, had told Vikram and Rea that his friend, Jimmy Khan, knew why the murders were happening. Vikram decided to pay Jimmy Khan a visit, and that’s when he got to know that it all had something to do with a cult named Aayasti, which operated in the 1950s. Vikram got to know that the metal occult symbol that they had found in Shastri Ji’s house, represented the cosmos. Jimmy Khan said that there was a pattern to the killings: Abhishek’s torso had been taken, Sujay and Vijay’s hands were severed, and Kalindi’s head was removed by the killer. Jimmy Khan told Vikram and Rea that the next target would be a princess, whose face would be taken by the killer. Vikram thought that Ananya, the local leader who did come from a royal lineage, could be the next target. Vikram and Anaya shared a past together, apart from the fact that she was the elder sister of Kavita, Vikram’s girlfriend. Actually, Vikram and Ananya met before the former met Kavita. Ananya liked Vikram, but somehow things didn’t work out between them. So it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Vikram had feelings for Ananya, and so he wanted to save her no matter what. I mean, he didn’t necessarily want anything romantic with her, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t feel close to her. But there were many things about Ananya’s life that Vikam didn’t know. He had no clue what she was capable of doing and the kind of fanatic she was.
What was Nandini trying to do with Rukmini?
Back in the 1950’s Rukmini was the leader of the cult named Aayasti, and they worshiped a demonic entity they referred to as Yast. Nandini, who happened to be Rea’s maternal grandmother, came to Charandaspur with her husband, Anant, looking to initiate a nuclear power plant project in the village. They had gotten permission from the government to initiate the project on the same site where the Aayasti community had their temple. Nandini went to talk to Rukmini about it, and she assured them she would give them a better and bigger place to conduct their worship. Rukmini told them that she was not doing the right thing, as Yast chose the place on his own, and if they were removed from there, then a curse would be placed on the villagers, and they wouldn’t be able to get rid of it for ages. But the inevitable happened, and their place of worship was destroyed. That’s when Rukmini found out something about Nandini that she probably hadn’t expected. In the Aaysta rulebook, Nandini’s details were mentioned. It was said that she would create a device that could control the universal energy and basically defeat death and bring a dead man back to life. The rulebook also stated that Nandini would become a widow, and she didn’t believe a word of the prophecy at first. But then everything started to come true right in front of her own eyes. Firstly, Anant, her husband, met with an accident, and then she saw that things that nobody knew about, like her pregnancy, were mentioned in the rulebook. Nandini decided to help Rukmini’s cause and use the device that she was creating to bring a dead person back to life.
Nandini almost brought a dead man back to life when she realized what Rukmini’s real intentions were. She stated that the moment Yast came back to life, there would be an apocalypse and the entire world would be destroyed. Nandini didn’t want that to happen, and so she made sure that the experiment was stopped midway and the vessel (the body made with ensemble parts from different people, which was going to come back to life) was burnt and destroyed. Rukmini killed Nandini, and she made a near escape before the villagers arrived and destroyed the entire place. Rukmini was able to survive, and then in the present day, it was her granddaughter who became the leader of the entire cult and made sure that she finished what was started back in 1952. So it was prophesied (if that’s the right word to use here) that the people who asked for a blessing were the ones who would have to pay when the time came. So if a person’s life had been saved because somebody from their family asked for a blessing, then in the present day, the body parts of those blessed individuals, who had defied death, would be taken to resurrect the demon lord, whom the Aayastis worshiped and who was known as Yast. The people who lost their lives in front of Vikram and Rea were the ones who, at some point in their lives, had been saved because somebody from their family had asked for the blessing and activated the universal energies by sacrificing their thumbs.
Who Was Leading The Aayasti Cult?
Vikram believed that the princess whose face was to be taken by the killer was Ananya, but it was in fact Kavita, his girlfriend. Vikram’s friend, Pramod Sahay, was also killed by the masked assassin as he was at the crime scene, and he’d probably tried to fight the killer. Vikram was devastated. He had come back to the village to find his missing mother, but instead, he had lost the love of his life and also his best friend. Jimmy Khan’s granddaughter was also killed by the masked killer, and her heart was taken away to bring the Yast back to life again. The last and final thing that Yast needed was the blood of a “miracle son.” Nobody knew what that meant, but then suddenly Vikram was kidnapped and taken to the same cave from where the Aayastis operated. Until that happened, Vikram believed that Vyankat was the one who was the leader of the cult, but it was not so. Though Vyankat’s mother was a part of the cult, he was just obsessed with Kavita (Vikram’s girlfriend) since his childhood, so much so that he had secretly installed CCTV cameras in Kavita’s house just so he could watch her. It was Vyankat who had told the telecom minister that Vikram had some incriminating evidence against him. His intention was to eliminate Vikram so that he could be with Kavita forever. But the minister’s men accidentally hit Kavita too, and she ended up in a comatose state for all this time, and so Vyankat’s entire plan failed.
There were two revelations made at the end of Mandala Murders: the first was that Vikram was the miracle child who was to be sacrificed to awaken the demon god, and the second was that Ananya was the granddaughter of Rukmini, who was leading the Aayasti cult in the present timeline. Ananya gave Vikram yet another surprise: his mother, who had been missing for the last 20-odd years, was still alive. Vikram couldn’t imagine that Ananya was the one who was the mastermind behind the murders and the leader of the cult. I personally think that though Ananya loved Vikram and wanted to live with him, she was bound by the rules of the cult. What that meant was that she knew that her sister was going to be sacrificed, yet she didn’t say anything as she believed that bringing Yast back to life was paramount to everything else. Vikram just couldn’t recognise that fanaticism that he could see in Ananya’s eyes; she seemed almost alien to him. Fortunately, Rea got to know what was happening, and she was able to figure out from where the cult members operated. Had that not been the case, Ananya would have been able to complete the ritual and awaken the demon lord.
How did Vikram’s mother save his life?
Vikram’s mother, back in the day (approximately 22 years back), had taken her younger son to the Aayasti cave and asked for a blessing. But little did she know that Vikram’s brother was already dead before Vasudha brought him there. So a blessing was due to her, since Yast couldn’t bring back her already dead child. I probably thought that that blessing got transferred to Vikram, and he received it when the goons of the telecom minister came to kill him. But he had gotten saved there just out of sheer luck. Ananya had kept Vasudha alive because she couldn’t be killed till Yast did what she asked of him. Vikram’s blood was being transferred to the new body that was created using all the body parts of the people who had been killed so far. Suddenly, the blood transfer stopped, and Vikram came back to life. Yast had to give Vasudha what she had asked for, and the cult members didn’t know that it would happen at such a critical moment. I believe that Vikram was extremely lucky, because had Vasudha not asked for that blessing, Yast would have arrived in the mortal realm. At the end, Rea also arrived at the scene, and she killed Ananya (and I will say that she did so in the most nonconvincing and convenient manner). So it could be said to be the mastermind of the entire operation, met with her fateful end, and it seemed like the entire demonic cult would fold. But I don’t think that was the case, as there were many things about Yast and the cult that nobody knew about. I don’t know for how long Vikram would be able to stay alive, keeping in mind that he was there on borrowed time. I say borrowed time because we had seen that the body parts of those who had been blessed by the Yast were needed to create a man whose body the Yast would use as a vessel. So it could happen that, in the future, Vikram’s body parts might be needed, and the cultists might go after him.
At the end of the Mandala Murders, we saw that Moksha, the lethal assassin, was sent to prison, but the fact remained that she was still alive. And someone came to her rescue, probably one of her fellow assassins from the cult. Also, the device that was made by Nandini was still there, and we realized that there were a lot of things about the Aayasti cult that we didn’t know about. So what did it mean? I feel that, though Vikram was reunited with his mother, his life would be far from ideal. I believe that it can’t have been so easy to get rid of such a powerful entity. Yast might come back to life in the future. Yes, Ananya had been killed, but I think that a new leader will emerge and try to make Yast come back to the mortal realm.
