Maamla Legal Hai – Episode 3 “Dignity” Recap & Review

Dignity

Episode 3 of Maamla Legal Hai starts with a monkey stealing one of the senior advocates – Cheema’s bag outside the Patparganj court. The money climbs up a tree, opens Cheema’s bag and starts throwing out the wads of cash inside.

There is a crowd of common people and lawyers that celebrate the rain of cash and start picking it up, leaving the senior advocate helpless.

The advocates capture the monkey and ask Judge Bainsla to find a solution for the monkey problem in Patparganj court. Tyagi offers a unique solution to the problem wherein the court’s peon – Shambu would dress up as an Asian Monkey himself to drive away the monkeys from the court. Shambu starts hissing and the actual monkey in the cage gets afraid, impressing Judge Bainsla.

However, upon the instigation of another senior lawyer, Judge Bainsla asks Vishwas to find a different solution to the monkey problem. Tyagi tells Judge Bainsla that this was a matter of their dignity and goes on strike along with the other advocates from Patparganj court.

Meanwhile, Ananya is with her house help’s husband – a farmer who is seeking a stay order from the court to stop government officials from illegally cutting down his crops.

The farmer learns from his wife that the government officials have already started cutting down the crops. Ananya asks him to tell his wife to stall the government officials for a few hours until they get the stay order. However, upon arriving at the court, Ananya learns all about the strike and is disheartened.

The Patparganj lawyers stop Ananya’s car and prohibit her from entering the court as they want the monkey problem to be resolved first. Inside the court, Vishwas suggests placing tiger excreta in different places of the court to stop the monkeys from entering the court.

Judge Bainsla is shocked by the suggestion but Vishwas adds that they needed 30kgs of tiger excreta to cover the entire perimeter of the court.

He also states that there was a scarcity of tigers in Delhi with some found in a nearby Zoo. Vishwas adds that the excreta needed to also be placed outside the office of every lawyer and judge, including Judge Bainsla’s. Tyagi argues that this practice leads to a lot of odour in the court, and asks her to reconsider their initial solution. Judge Bainsla asks Vishwas to look for other viable solutions for the problem.

At the same time, Ananya reaches out to Sujata and asks her to help with the stay order. Sujata tells Ananya that she cannot help her this time as the strike was important for the rights of the lawyers in Patparganj court. She reaches out to Mintu and tries to talk to Tyagi. However, he refuses to let her talk to Tyagi as there was a strike that Tyagi had initiated.

Ananya tries to meet Vishwas but is shocked to learn that he too is busy with the monkey problem. Vishwas tells Ananya that he is going to dress up a dog as a tiger to scare the monkeys away. Ananya asks Vishwas to help her talk to Judge Bainsla so that she can stop the strike.

Meanwhile, Vishwas discusses his new idea with Tyagi and learns that Judge Bainsla would not agree to dress the dog up as a tiger because that could also account for animal cruelty. Ananya grouped up 4 more lawyers who were against the strike and together the five protested against the strike.

Judge Bainsla tries to convince Tyagi to end the strike but the latter claims that he needed to show Phorey how he was a man of power so that he could beat him during the elections. He asks Judge Bainsla to accept the initial solution of using Shambu but she refuses to do so on humanitarian grounds. She adds that she could not pass the order on her own accord as Judge Ghosh was also against the order.

Ananya learns that due to the strike, she had failed to help her maid’s husband as the government officials had cut up all 5 acres of crop on his land. She snatches the mic from Sujata and calls her out for doing something as illegal as stopping the court from proceeding, obstructing justice. Sujata argues that Ananya too was obstructing justice for the lawyers by meddling in the issue.

However, Mintu shows up outside to tell the lawyers that their demands have been heard. Judge Bainsla and Ghosh tell the lawyers that Shambu was appointed as the MRO (Monkey Rescue Officer) and would dress up as an Asian Monkey to drive away the real monkeys as an employee of the Patparganj court.

Mintu announces publicly that Tyagi’s help had secured their rights which gets the lawyers to sing praises of Tyagi. The episode ends with Ananya apologising to the farmer for failing him.

The Episode Review

This episode was hilarious from start to finish. On the one hand, we have the advocates trying to fight for their rights against monkeys. This is a very valid problem as there have been several cases of monkeys entering the courtroom in the middle of a hearing in regional Indian courts.

The real-life incidents of humans dressing up as monkeys to shoo the animals away or keeping tiger excreta in various places in the court are all solutions that have been tried and tested in reality, making these attempts even funnier.

On the other hand, Ananya’s drive to attain justice for a farmer who himself has no faith in the judiciary has to be peak comedy. The episode moves between the two issues at hand but Ananya seems to be caught up between both.

She should stand with the lawyers and fight for their rights but similarly needs to help her maid’s husband, making the entire episode chaotic for her.