Betting on Dreams: Vijay Varma hustles his way from mills to matka in his latest web series

Matka King | Director: Nagraj Popatrao Manjule | Cast: Vijay Varma, Kritika Kamra, Sai Tamhankar | Hindi | Prime Video

 Vijay Varma has been bouncing around in the audience’s consciousness for a while with outstanding performances as friend of the hero in Gully Boy (2019) and as smooth talking villain in Dahaad (2023). Matka King solidifies his ability to carry an entire series on his able shoulders. Based on a true story, Matka King features Varma playing Brij Bhatti, a mill manager with an entrepreneurial mindset who comes up with the idea of matka, a game involving numbers. Much like Hansal Mehta’s Scam 1992, the series lionises the ability to take risk and work within the restrictive economy fol­lowing the 1960s and 1970s.

There is a certain bitter nostalgia in the depiction of Bombay of that era: mill workers, race courses, sophisticated Parsi dinners, criminals wearing white. Varma, as his onscreen wife describes him, is not totally bad, but just somewhat bad. He takes care of the women in his life, loves his son, stands by his workers, and looks out for his friends. His working-class world collides with his rich patron Gulrukh (played gracefully by Kritika Kamra) who takes his matka game to the upper class. But as Bombay changes, so does Brij Bhatti’s world.

The mills close down after a big strike where the workers backs are broken and the land is used a real estate, setting the stage for the Mumbai that was to come. A city of lost hopes and dying light, where risk taking has changed, as has the idea of honesty in business.