‘Chauranga’ is set in a village that is straight out of 1980s parallel cinema’s rural outposts of exploitation and misery. The village is ruled by the dictates and whims of Dhaval (Sanjay Suri), a landlord who has clearly seen better days but insists on slavish deference just like those uncrowned potentates from the films of three decades ago.

Teenager Bajrangi (Riddhi Sen) knows his place in the hierarchy (at Dhaval’s feet) but his younger brother Santu (Soham Maitra) is far more resentful. He chafes against Dhaval’s stranglehold and has the temerity to fall in love with Dhaval’s daughter, Mona (Ena Saha). It is about a Dalit boy, who strays into the vicinity of a village shrine. Two minions of the local landlord spot him, chase him and push him into a well. When news of the incident reaches the callous zamindar, he spares no thought for the badly wounded outcaste. Instead, prompted by the temple priest, he frets over the need to purify the water in the well. His priorities are shockingly clear.

This is the abhorrent social cesspool in which first-time writer-director Bikas Ranjan Mishra situates his stark, searing story of caste violence and religious orthodoxy. It is a man-made hellhole where a low-caste boy stands only a marginally better chance of survival than a hapless animal. A little later in Chauranga, a harmless pig is mercilessly beaten to death by the sightless priest for showing up outside the latter’s home. Neither the aforementioned human victim of hate nor the ill-fated pet pig is the fulcrum of this disturbing narrative about blighted lives, crushed dreams and unceremonious deaths. They are, however, symptomatic of how terribly wrong things are in this unnamed, culturally indeterminate village over which an upper caste brute wields untrammelled power. The story’s nebulous setting serves the purpose of underlining the universality of patriarchal and caste-driven violence in India’s rural badlands.