Crime as a theme has been an integral part of Bejoy Nambiar's projects whether it is his feature debut “Shaitan” or his upcoming web-series, “Kaala”. The writer-director says he is able to narrate his stories effectively by infusing an aspect of crime in them.
"I don’t use it as a pet, ( I use it) only as a device to make the story effective. I’m drawn to it because it makes my storytelling better,” the director, known for films such as "Shaitan", "David" and "Wazir", told PTI in an interview.
Citing the example of his 2020 action-thriller "Taish", Nambiar said in the story, starring Pulkit Samrat, Kriti Kharbanda, Harshvardhan Rane, and Jim Sarbh, he tapped into crime only as a device.
"In ‘Taish’, crime was incidental, everything was about these two families and this one incident that happened. But one family happens to be in the world of crime and that kind of justifies their angst and their way of dealing with things, which kick-starts so many things," he added.
“Kaala”, slated to stream on Disney+Hotstar, is primarily about revenge and betrayal and crime just serves as the narrative background, he said about the series that features Avinash Tiwary of "Bulbbul" fame as an Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer.
"Crime is only the motif in ‘Kaala’. Like, when you see the personal journey he (Avinash) goes through, you see other things. My story, which I pitched to Hotstar and T-Series, was that the crime was not clear at that time, so we arrived at the crime part later.
"But crime became an interesting tool to tell the story effectively. There were elements of revenge, betrayal, so these were the things that we were pushing hard on, they fit in well with this world.”
Nambiar was interested in delving into the world of financial crime for “Kaala”, and he credits one of the writers for coming up with a story around reverse hawala, a type of transaction where the money is sent back to the original sender through a different broker.
"We were clear that we wanted to do something about money laundering, so we were looking at different aspects of it. We were studying about white financial crimes, and financial crimes of different kinds.
"So, hawala is something that we were studying very closely. One of the writers, Prayas came up with the idea of reverse hawala and how it can be used to fund the money back into the system, so that was the pitch that he had and we all latched on to the idea. I thought we had written something interesting.”
Nambiar said they read many real-life examples of cash smuggling to take their stories forward.
“We have heard a lot of things (about hawala). Almost every other month we used to read how illegal cash is smuggled across the country and those kinds of news reports became like regular reading material for us.
"We used to take those pictures, where cash is being laid out and cops are standing, we took that as a reference and recreated sequences for our show,” he added.
The show features an ensemble cast including Rohan Vinod Mehra, Nivetha Pethuraj, Taher Shabbir and Hiten Tejwani, among others.
Produced by Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar and Nambiar, “Kaala” will release on September 15, on Disney+ Hotstar.
Up next for Nambiar, is a film about young adults.
“My next is in the same age bracket as that of ‘Shaitan’, it is made for young adults. It is a college film, it is about students going to college. It is a story set in a college. It is in the realm of ‘Shaitan’ but nothing like ‘Shaitan’.”
In the past, the filmmaker said, he was approached to develop a sequel to “Shaitan” and even a web-series, but he was not interested in doing so.
“I don’t want to recreate it, for sure. They (producers) had asked me to do a sequel, I’m like, ‘I’ll never do it’. They have asked me a couple of times, they asked me to do a film, and then asked me to do a series, I was like, ‘I’ll never do it’. I don’t want to touch that,” he concluded.
