There’s something in the Kathmandu air. Indian intelligence agent Ram Chandra is witnessing strange movements of people and luggage. Ram Chandra’s suspicion deepens when his Pakistani counterpart tells him: I am going to treat you soon to some pickle from my country. You won’t forget the taste.
Ram Chandra (Anupam Tripathi) is too late to prevent a hijacking that stretches a routine 105-minute journey between Kathmandu and Delhi into a weeklong nightmare. Five men take control of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 and force pilot Devi Sharan (Vijay Varma) to make various stops before landing in Kandahar in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Sharan and his crew, including the airhostesses Indrani (Patralekhaa Paul) and Chhaya (Additi Gupta Chopra), valiantly grapple with an ordeal that stretches their training. Back in Delhi, External Affairs Minister Vijaybhan (Pankaj Kapur) and his advisers weigh their options after the hijackers demand the release of jailed terrorists.
Anubhav Sinha’s IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is based on the commandeering of an Indian Airlines aircraft on December 24, 1999. The Netflix show soberly revisits one of the most dramatic and ignominious chapters in India’s experiences with terrorism. For all the action in the sky and on the ground, the six-episode limited Hindi series is surprisingly controlled.
For viewers who haven’t forgotten the perceived capitulation of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Sinha and co-writer Trishant Srivastava offer background, context and detailing of backroom negotiations. The Hindi series examines various facets of an unenviable situation while trying not to take sides – a delicate dance that sometimes misses a few steps.
The show unfolds mainly between Kathmandu, Delhi and Kandahar. Editor Amarjit Singh smoothly cuts between locations without losing either the narrative thread or slackening his hold on the human factor. Each episode ends with a freeze frame, ratcheting up the tension.
In Kandahar, the fliers are at the mercy of the hijackers, the Taliban and the collapse of basic hygiene. In Kathmandu, Ram Charan doggedly chases clues into the hijackers’ connections.
In Delhi, security officials work the phone lines while consuming endless cups of tea. DRS (Arvind Swami), Ranjan (Kumud Mishra), Mukul (Manoj Pahwa) and Abhijeet (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) are eventually dispatched to Kandahar to negotiate with the hijackers.
In the weakest sub-plot, journalists played by Dia Mirza and Amrita Puri clash over how the event should be covered. In addition to using actual news footage from the time, the show faithfully recreates key events – the protests by anguished families of the passengers, heated press conferences, the speculation over why commandos didn’t storm the plane during a halt in Amritsar.
Gripping, often nerve-wracking and deftly performed, the series is never anything but immersive. Handsomely produced, beautifully shot by Ewan Mulligan and Ravi Kiran Ayyagari and stacked with impressive visual effects, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is one of the slickest Indian shows on a global streaming platform in a while.
The collective effort to solve the crisis involves a minor army of major actors, including Naseeruddin Shah, Aditya Srivastava, Sushant Singh and Kanwaljeet Singh. Huddles in underlit offices in Delhi contrasts with sun-kissed Kandahar, where the negotiators walk on eggshells as they try to save lives.
While Anubhav Sinha’s crafting, staging and handling of his diverse cast are impeccable, the politics of the past as well as the present inevitably pierce his dispassionate treatment. It can never be forgotten that the series is out at a time when we have another muscular BJP-led coalition in power.
The questionable leadership of the actual external affairs minister at the time, Jaswant Singh, is handled with kid gloves. His fictionalised counterpart’s waffling is projected onto reliable villains – the media, coalition partners.
In forever trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack errs on the side of caution. Did self-censorship inihbit the creators? What if the Congress party had been in charge at the time?
The makers deflect these uncomfortable questions by focusing on uncommon courage in impossible circumstances. The flight crew is nothing short of heroic, their professionalism softening even the hardened hijackers. The main terrorists, played by Rajiv Thakur, Diljohn and Harminder Singh, are relatedly human rather than cut-outs.
The negotiators come off as duty-bound officials gamely carrying out a salvage job rather than a rescue mission. There are memorable scenes in Kandahar as the beleaguered men alternately beg and cajole the Taliban’s Muttawakil (Muazzam Bhat) into helping them rather than the terrorists.
The desperate situation is best captured by the gun that is nearly always pressed to Devi Sharan’s neck. DRS has a laconic response to the question, “What do we tell the press?”
“That we are fucked” says a lot by saying little. The show has a rueful, fatalistic tone – the suggestion of an unfair fight in which one side had its hands tied at all times. History won’t be kind to us, a character says (the end credits support him). Instead, the show draws attention to the diamonds in the ashes.
Also read:
‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ director Anubhav Sinha: ‘An accessible thriller with layering’
