IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is a fictionalized six-episode limited series, co-created by Anubhav Sinha and Trishant Srivastava, about the longest hostage situation in Indian aviation history. The riveting Netflix thriller creates a striking balance between reality and fiction to underline the importance of the crime. IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’s screenplay consciously avoids high-octane action tropes and principal characters resorting to nationalistic rhetoric or jingoistic dialogues in favor of unflinching realism and candor. Such a non-sentimental writing approach makes the series all the more powerful and a fine account of the resilience of the human spirit.

Netflix released IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack on August 29, 2024. In this interview, the aforementioned Srivastava discusses his team’s extensive research, the process of adaptation and the importance of creative freedom when bringing one of the most important chapters of Indian political history to the screen.

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Dipankar Sarkar: You began as television screenwriter and later moved to writing for OTT platforms. How did you adapt to the differences between the two formats?  

Trishant Srivastava: I have written across different formats before, including films that never got made, and even for radio. So, transitioning from television to OTT writing wasn’t that big of a challenge for me. Writing for television is a different medium, especially because you have to write every day. That setup teaches you discipline, which I carried over to writing for web platforms. Web writing, to me, is a balance between writing for television and writing a film script. The shift wasn’t drastic because I already understood the sensibility of the medium and what each format requires. 

One of the advantages of web writing is that, as writers, we generally get more time and can take a more film-like approach. However, like in TV, you still need to end episodes on cliffhangers. This is something you learn from television writing — how to write quickly and construct compelling scenes. If you’re able to merge the best of both worlds, your writing style can remain distinct. 

In television, your sensibilities as a writer don’t really change, even if what you see on screen is different from what was written. This can be influenced by the way it’s shot, directed, performed and scored. Personally, I prefer writing for OTT over television. It offers more creative freedom when it comes to shaping the script.

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DS: How did you come across the idea of making a web series about the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814?   

TS: The producers of Matchbox Shots, Sarita Patil and Sanjay Routray, knew Devi Sharan, the captain of the Flight 814, and they had the rights to his book, which has also been quoted in the show. They approached me with the project, and when I came on board as a writer, we began researching the subject. The research process took over a year and was quite extensive. We delved into geopolitics, the flight’s passengers and met with Captain Sharma. We learned a lot about flights and various aspects of the situation. That’s how the series took shape. So, if you ask me, I would say I did not come across the idea for making the web series. 

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DS: What was journalist and non-fiction writer Adrian Levy’s contribution to IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack?  

TS: Adrian is like a goldmine of information with the research he has done and the amount of work he has put in. So, when we were researching the subject, there were many areas related to this conspiracy for which we lacked sources. Adrian came on board and opened our minds to what was actually happening behind the scenes, helping us understand the politics of the Taliban. He has done extensive research in the Middle East and on global terrorism, and is possibly one of the strongest and most well-researched voices on the subject. Adrian’s contribution was largely focused on these aspects, and he helped us gain a much deeper understanding of the entire subject. He also shared some of his research and brought an international voice to the show. 

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DS: What do you mean by “international voice”?

TS: What I mean is that, when we approach a subject like this, we look at it from our lens. But what was happening in the U.S. at that time, for example? What was happening in Dubai at that time? What was happening to the Taliban at that time? You know, things like that. In India, we were under major sanctions because of the Pokhran nuclear test. So, what did that mean for our foreign affairs at that time? So, what did that mean for our foreign affairs at that time? You get our side of the story, and then a person from outside gives you their side of the story, and you can analyze it better. So, the approach doesn’t become one-sided. Largely, when I say “international voice,” I mean someone like Adrian, who has worked extensively in the field and can provide insights we might not have considered. We’ve done a lot of research, and that itself is a significant task. Of course, we can’t include everything in the show. That’s just not possible because the show follows a certain format and duration. But when it comes to writing, we try to understand everything fully.

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DS: What key aspects did you and your team of writers extract from the hijacking incident to develop six episodes?  

TS: That’s a very difficult question to answer because we had a plethora of information about the subject. But our key moment was [this]: what does it feel like to be living at that time when a plane gets hijacked for seven days? What does it mean for the people inside the flight? What does it mean for the person whose job it is to solve this crisis? What does it mean to be in that moment? We wanted to possibly go back in time and imagine it ourselves. We did not want to write it from a nostalgic lens. We wanted to be in that moment while it’s unfolding emotionally and in every other way. So, I think that was our larger approach. 

As we did our research, we found that someone born in 1995, ’96 or ’97, now in their late 20s or early 30s, doesn’t remember the event. A large part of our young population might have read about it in history books or course materials, but they don’t recall it firsthand. I was young, and I remember watching it all. Maybe you remember it too, but many people don’t. Rather than just narrating a story about a hijack in 1999 and how we had to release three terrorists, our key research question was: can we tell the story by going back in time and presenting it as it happened in real-time? That was one of the main takeaways from our research, and something my team and I focused on heavily.

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DS: Since IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack has an ensemble cast, how challenging was it to ensure that every principal character made their presence felt?  

TS: I would rather give credit to my director and the showrunner, Anubhav Sinha, because I think he was largely responsible. When we were writing, we were focused on the story. The casting, as you know, is usually the final step. We never knew who was going to play which character. So, I think the credit should go to the editor and the director for ensuring that every performance and actor stood out. As writers, we were writing the story in the best possible way we knew.

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DS: During the hijacking, the war room in Delhi is occupied by tense officers from various ranks working with the Indian government. In crafting their dialogues, how did you balance authenticity and dramatic tension?  

TS: Let me tell you something, since I’ve been writing for a while, and this question is largely about writing: what happens — and where most writers, including myself, tend to go wrong — is that we write dialogues while thinking of them purely as dialogues. A deeper understanding of writing dialogues often stems from proscenium theatre. Many of our films are filled with punchline-heavy dialogue. If it’s an important character, he’ll often speak as though he’s standing on a stage.

During our research, we met a lot of officers and people to understand and stay accurate with the organization. The truth is, there was no specific effort on my part to write the dialogues in a particular style, like, “this is how this person should talk.” Officers, bureaucrats and soldiers are just regular people. It’s not like a royal court where there’s a formal way of speaking. 

And, honestly, much of the credit goes to the great actors we had in that room. The thing about great actors is that you can give them something that’s not so great, and they’ll make it brilliant. I’ll credit every single one of them. Even when they’re not speaking, what they do in the scene elevates it significantly. So, a large part of the credit also goes to them for bringing that authenticity to the screen. The tension and the authenticity were balanced by the situation they were in. Within that scope of reality we tried to bring tension. I think that creating tension is easy as it is a fair way of cheating, and that comes with writing. So, the authenticity was deliberate. We just wanted them to be real individuals and feel real.

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DS: Why did you use voiceover and archival footage to narrate the historical background of geopolitical considerations and international conflicts that contributed to the current crisis in the narrative?  

TS: To answer your question simply, it was not possible to show everything on the screen. I mean, the scale was so wide and the research was so extensive that it was not feasible for us to show certain constraints. It wouldn’t have made sense. For example, if we had included a sequence on the Kargil War, it just wouldn’t fit. When we were researching, we came across the fact that in 1999, television and cable television were emerging, and journalism as we know it today was just starting back then. We gained access to a lot of footage, and we thought, if we have that footage, why don’t we use it? However, even after using the footage, we decided to add the voiceover at a much later stage. We thought we needed something to bind everything together so it wouldn’t feel jarring or out of place. Like, why is this footage coming in, or why are we being shown this? The series aims to cover a broader scope; while it focuses on the hijacking incident, it also delves into the global context of that time and India’s role within it.

The voiceover was introduced to tie everything together and make sure there were no loose ends. It also ensured that the flow of the series wasn’t disrupted because we were aware that the series moves at a fast pace. Our episodes are not slow, and most people who have come back to me after watching the series told me they watched it all in one go. They started and finished it without stopping. So, the idea of the voiceover was to largely bind and tie everything up, and the reason for using archival footage was to show that the event wasn’t happening in isolation.

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DS: Various subtle moments are depicted without exaggeration or melodrama in IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack — a disinclined father compelled to care of his son, an air hostess being reminded of her ailing father and the cabin crew’s plan to overpower the hijackers. How do these scenes add to the narrative? 

TS: The hijack was about the people stuck in that plane for seven days. They went through that ordeal without food [and] water, and the chilling Kandahar cold without functioning toilets. When you talk to the passengers, you can’t imagine what they went through; it was an ordeal, and nobody should ever face that ordeal. When we talked to a lot of passengers, there were way too many stories, and it was not possible to put every story in the show. But I cannot tell you which is which; some of these stories were true, and some of them are adaptations from a lot of passenger accounts that we got to know. But we wanted to be slightly sensitive towards that ordeal, which is why you find that there is no exaggeration or melodrama.  

You cannot tell a story about a hijack without talking about the hijack. It’s largely their story. Everything was happening to bring them safely back to the country. That was the primary goal — to bring our hijacked passengers back, to bring our citizens back. They had, for no fault of theirs, found themselves going through this ordeal. So, I mean, there were sick passengers, and there were all sorts of people inside the plane. There were many honeymooning couples who went to Kathmandu and were sort of returning to the country. We wanted to tell their story, and we were also aware that they would possibly be watching the show. We did not want to make fun of their misery or exaggerate it, and we did not want to take it beyond what actually happened. Passengers have told us that whatever you have shown is possibly how it happened. We knew our responsibility: to watch it would not be an easy experience for them. 

I am guessing that many [survivors] may not have watched the show, and I totally respect their decision because of this. The idea was that these moments were important. If you would have made a show without talking about them or showing them, that would have been, according to me, wrong. They were the ones who possibly went through the most. It’s largely their story, but if we are showing it, we should try to be sensitive about their portrayal and what they went through. We should not make fun of them, but we also should not show something that possibly did not happen.

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DS: Lastly, how was your experience of adapting a screenplay from actual events while balancing creative freedom and remaining faithful to the facts?

TS: I was working on it for the last four years, and it was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. It’s not easy to write such a show, it’s not easy to create such a story and it’s not that stories like these come to you all the time. Maybe, I don’t think in my career, there will be another ICA 814. This was the show. So, it was largely a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me, and I feel thankful. I feel privileged that I got a chance to write a story like this. I mean, this is the reason why I sort of wanted to become a writer in the first place. It’s the reason why you chose this medium to tell your stories — to be able to tell stories like these, to be able to talk about stories like these.  

When I got a chance to work on a show like this, it was a no-brainer to say yes to it. But it has not been easy, and none of the projects like these are easy. Even after the thousands of drafts we’ve written, I was there on the shoot as well, and we were still writing on the shoot. So, creative freedom is not different from staying true to the facts. You know, you have creative freedom, but when you’re telling a real story, then being true to what happened takes precedence over everything else. One has to stay largely true to the facts. Creative freedom is where you change things, but you don’t change the soul of it. You do not let your own agenda or what you believe in interfere with what you write. I mean, you’re writing a story, and you should write it with as much honesty as possible. That’s not just for this show, but for every show, film or whatever else I’m writing.

Dipankar Sarkar (@Dipankar_Tezpur) is a graduate in film editing from the Film and Television Institute of India and currently based in Mumbai. As a freelancer, he frequently contributes to various Indian publications on cinema-related topics.

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