Guns & Gulaabs – Episode 1 Recap & Review

Chapter 1: Har Insaan Me Hai Shaitaan

Episode 1 of Guns & Gulaabs opens with a high school student named Gangaram witnessing thugs chasing after and killing a man. Gangaram helps the man light his cigarette before he takes his last breath. Before he passes, the man tells the boy the secret location of a treasure.

The man who died is Babu Tiger, Tipu’s father. Tipu has no remorse for his father’s death because he knew his father to be a goon. The local influential thug, Ganchi, attends Babu Tiger’s funeral where Ganchi’s son, Jugnu “Chhotu” Ganchi, meets Tipu. Ganchi tries to console Tipu about his father’s death and also tries to get Tipu to join their team.

Gangaram shows up to tell Tipu the secret his father had told him before his death but is shooed away. Ganchi goes back home and yells down the cops for letting someone kill his #1 man, Babu Tiger. With an important drug deal in the works, Ganchi starts growing restless as his right-hand man has passed away.

Tipu eventually breaks down while carrying his father’s dead body for cremation. On the other hand, we have Inspector Arjun Varma who is transferred from Delhi to the Bureau of Narcotics in Gulaabganj. He is in town to investigate the opium drug crisis in Gulaabganj.

Ganchi meets the buyer from Calcutta for a new deal and promises to offer a timely delivery of drugs. The buyer warns Ganchi about the dangerous higher-ups that are involved in the deal and tells him that he needs to ensure the deliveries are always at the end of every month. Ganchi is annoyed with the arrogance of the buyer but agrees to the deal because of the money involved in it.

Ganchi’s men ask him to crack a deal with Arjun because he’s new to Gulaabganj and poses a threat to the deal. After Babu’s death, Chandralekha visits Tipu’s garage to get her bike tyre repaired. She talks to him about his father while Tipu tries to flirt with her but fails miserably.

Tipu’s friend tells him that Chandralekha is getting a lot of marriage proposals and asks him to act fast if he wants to see himself with her. Tipu is waiting to open his own garage before proposing to her. His friend asks him to propose to Chandralekha in English because she’s an English teacher at the local school and doing so would impress her.

Arjun visits the opium factory to understand the process of harvesting, cultivation, testing and the eventual export of the medicinal drug. Superintendent of Police, Mr Mishra, visits Arjun at the factory to speak to him on behalf of Ganchi. He asks Arjun to maintain harmony with the people in Gulaabganj.

Arjun understands the implication and invites the police officer to dinner at home. Meanwhile, Tipu and his friends pay a couple of high schoolers to write a love letter for him in English in order to impress Chandralekha. The high schooler is Gangaram. He tries to tell the secret to Tipu but decides not to when he learns that Tipu has a crush on Chandralekha.

Gangaram rushes back to school instead of giving the letter to Tipu because he too has a crush on Chandralekha, his teacher. In class, Chandralekha asks the new girl, Jyotsna, to share notes with the class topper – Lalkrishna. Ganchi, on the other hand, is very stressed about the deal with the Calcutta buyers because Babu Tiger is no longer going to handle it for him.

Mahinder, Ganchi’s assistant, tells him that their enemy thug, Nabeed, is behind Babu’s killing and a popular contract killer from Mumbai named “4-Cut” Aatmaram is behind Babu’s death. The man is famous for killing people with four cuts on their bodies.

Mahinder also adds that Aatmaram was someone who could not be killed easily because he had a boon that helped him escape death multiple times. Ganchi asks Mahinder to find Aatmaram to teach him a lesson. At the mechanic shop, Tipu’s friends force him to give the love letter to Chandralekha.

Tipu gives Chandralekha the letter that he purchased from Gangaram and runs back to the shop without waiting for her response. Chandralekha comes back to Tipu’s and throws the letter in his face, cutting all ties with him. Tipu is heartbroken from the rejection.

Arjun comes back home from work to his wife, Madhu, who is cooking dinner for the family. Their daughter, Jyotsna, spots them hugging each other and gags. The joyful family interaction is interrupted when a woman calls Arjun asking if he missed her. The call shakes Arjun up but he lies to Madhu about it.

That night, Jugnu is at the local restaurant that had created a partition to divide the residents of the two neighbouring towns – Gulaabgaj and Sherpur. Both towns were known to have a rivalry because of their gang leaders. A fight breaks out after one of the residents of Sherpur makes a joke about Jugnu.

Jugnu leaves the scene and puts alcohol in the petrol tank of the man’s motorcycle. At the same time, Tipu cries his eyes out at his mechanic shop for being rejected by Chandralekha while Gangaram writes his own letter to her. Arjun shows up at a restaurant to meet Yamini, the woman who had called him.

The men from the restaurant show up with their bike at Tipu’s shop to have it repaired. They learn that he is Babu’s son and try to instigate him by telling him the story of his father’s death.

While he is already hurt about Chandralekha, Tipu gets angry at the man and kills him with his spanner (paana in Hindi). The episode ends with Tipu killing off the other man with the spanner as well as beginning his journey as a thug named Paana Tipu.

The Episode Review

This show evokes a sense of nostalgia that only people who grew up in the 1990’s will relate to. From cassette tapes to landline phones as well as references to popular Bollywood actors like Rajesh Khanna, the show screams ’90s Bollywood just like it aimed to before the start. The comedy in the episode is not forced or in your face and is very natural, as expected from makers Raj & DK.

The first episode gives away very little about the story, yet similarly far too much. We know that the two rival towns are run by rival leaders and it is possible that a clash between these two gang leaders will result in the corruption of an honest cop like Arjun who probably has a few demons in his own closet.