Into the ‘Khufiya-verse’ with Vishal Bhardwaj

Director Vishal Bhardwaj, along with leads Ali Fazal and Wamiqa Gabbi, discusses the murky, fascinating world of Indian espionage, and plans for a ‘Khufiya’ universe

When Vishal Bhardwaj first adapted William Shakespeare’s Hamlet many years ago, he and co-writer Stephen Alter envisioned it as an espionage story set in the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency. Claudius, a spy, betrays his elder brother, King Hamlet, forcing him to defect to another country; one day, at Heathrow Airport, he encounters his son, Prince Hamlet, and commands him to seek revenge.

“I was obsessed with cracking the idea of the ghost,” Vishal, who eventually made a very different Hamlet, 2014’s searing Haider, tells The Hindu. “In the original story, it was the father living under a ‘ghost identity’.”

Khufiya, Vishal’s new film releasing on Netflix on October 5, treads into similar murky waters. The film is adapted from the novel Escape to Nowhere by Amar Bhushan, published in 2012. Bhushan, a former chief of the counter-espionage unit of R&AW, fictionalised a real-life case, when a mole was discovered in the agency’s headquarters in New Delhi. In 2004, Rabinder Singh, an Army Major who later became Joint Secretary of the Southeast Asia desk of R&AW, fell under the suspicion of his seniors and was closely surveilled. His office and home were bugged; his every movement meticulously tracked.

Then, one day, he was gone.

“I have always found espionage stories to be very juicy,” says Vishal, proclaiming his love for Hitchcock’s Notorious (1949) and the novels of John le Carré. For Khufiya, he interacted at length with Bhushan, learning about the inner workings of R&AW and what distinguishes it from its American counterpart, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). “In New Delhi, a bus leaves from Dhaula Kuan picking up R&AW employees standing at a point with their bags and tiffin carriers and dropping them off at six o’clock in the evening. It’s nothing like someone arriving on a bike wearing shades like in Hollywood movies.”

Another fascinating insight was the cultivation and upkeep of assets — often through cash or material help — in foreign countries. “In Nepal, there was once an asset who desperately needed a washing machine. But the accountant here wasn’t clearing the bill.”

Ali Fazal, who plays the suspected double agent, Ravi Mohan, in Khufiya, assented to the film within three hours of his call with Vishal. In a coincidence, the Mirzapur actor had recently played an ISI agent in his Hollywood outing Kandahar. The two are entirely different films and roles, Ali insists. “That was a hardcore action movie while this is a more dense, detailed, moody take on the genre.”