At roughly 135 minutes overall, the documentary doesn’t slack at any point. Pm numerous occasions, the camera lingers and captures minute unsaid details from the faces. Rahman and Qutub-e-Kripa blends beautifully into the narrative of the show. That’s the most horrible part of it for me. They didn’t know anything about the wider world. But the kids? 15, 15, 22, 25 and 33! They – at least 3 of them – had their whole lives ahead of them. The elders of the family had seen their fair share of life. To me, that’s the biggest tragedy of all. There were five of them, ranging in age from 33 to 15. To many of the people on the show, the saddest thing is the death of the family’s children. And this is what Leena Yadav and her team captures so brilliantly. The tragedy – and yes, it is a tragedy – of the Bhatia family bears proof to that. As if we’re in the mythological ages where swarg (Heaven) and paatal (Underworld) were different, where you could enjoy the godly pleasures and not worry about the demons and spirits crawling beneath the ground. This was a standard, upwardly mobile middle-class family. Because, come on, 11 people of a single family dying together? In the same room? Like that? No way!īut that’s exactly what happened in 2018 in Burari. We think that something like this could never happen to us, or to people we know. It is this commonness that Barkha Dutt’s quote above references.
The reason we identify with their lives and fear this story is because of the sheer quotidian nature of it all. These are normal people, with normal faces. However much we might like to distance ourselves from a ghastly tragedy like this, we can’t simply run away, because it speaks to some of our deepest personal and social fears. These neighbours retelling the stories could be us, tomorrow.
The scariness of the show comes from the relatability of the whole thing. There are no demons lurking in the shadows. At least not in the traditional sense of the words. If you’re refraining from watching the show because it is “spooky” or “horror”, rest assured that that’s not the case. Because at its core, Leena Yadav’s miniseries is as much about what happened within and to the Bhatia family as it is about the larger society in India. I could tell you all of it here and it wouldn’t constitute a spoiler. Now, the facts of the case are in the public domain since a long time. And finally, it tries to make sense of the whole thing. It follows that up with a deep dive into the history of the Bhatia family, piecing clues and character sketches from interviews with the neighbours and relatives.
The show starts by following the ensuing public and media circus. But it’s instructive about the significance of the 11 deaths. It’s one line in a show that has many great lines, from neighbours, doctors, policemen, even a priest.
“The collective salacious appetite for scandal comes from the kind of othering of dysfunctionality.” Where can you watch: Streaming on Netflix.Īt one point in the final episode of Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary miniseries “House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths” we get this quote from journalist Barkha Dutt: Trigger Warning: The is a review of a show about alleged suicide/murder.
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