Money Heist on Netflix topped the charts for a long span. Lockdown gave us a chance to watch this exhaustively detailed series. The highs and lows, the straightly defined characters and an extraordinary show of intelligent heist leaves you baffled multiple times. Season 4 – Last episode got over and there was a void – I would have loved to see more of him – the mastermind – Sergio…. The wait till the next season looked a long one.
What part of us really connects to the negative, to the wrong doers? After all no matter how much the glorification, it was ultimately a clever crime – well planned, well executed. This question stayed in my sub conscious until I bumped into a random logic that perfectly defined my emotional assistance to Sergio. I found it in Shantaram, a bestseller by Gregory David Roberts (my current read). In this book an honorable mafia don Khader Bhai states that any crime has two elements – the sin element which is defined by the way it ruins the souls of the victims and also by way of who are the victims. The other element is the crime part that is defined by how, where and when it is committed. I know it is complex but an easier way to explain is in crimes like prostitution and child trafficking the sin element is way to high which fills your heart with extreme hatred towards the convicts.
On the other hand robbery, currency black marketing has a stronger crime element that largely leaves one concerned and fearsome about where the society is heading. In Money Heist, Sergio and team take charge of a mint where they mint their own money. He repeatedly says, “I am not stealing anyone’s money, I am putting more money into the system.” No oppression, no intentional violence, no mala fides which bought the sin element to a minimal low.
That is where I as a commoner connected with the heist, which is the reason, I felt the way I felt for all the characters. The wonders of finding a direct link between two masterpieces, one in prose and the other on screen once again justifies the idea – the world is full of ideas that come to you in various forms, it’s up to you how much you absorb, how much you relate.