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The hijacking of Indian Airlines 814 in December 1999, the convoluted way the week-long hostage situation played out in far-flung locations, and its fall-out which is felt even today, became a case study in How Not To Handle A Hijack. Or, let me amend that: How To Fumble Your Way To Defuse A Crisis Hoping Someone Else Would Do It.
A 180 people, which included the crew and passengers, were held at gun-point by five masked men for seven terrifying days, during which one person died, and another was badly injured. Based on the book, ‘Flight Into Fear’, by Captain Devi Sharan and Srinjoy Chowdhury, and directed by Anubhav Sinha, ‘IC 814 The Kandahar Hijack’ recreates that tense week, through which the plane passed through multiple airports (Kathmandu, Amritsar, Lahore, Dubai, and finally, Kandahar), with tempers rising amongst the hijackers, and with multiple Indian agencies casting about to find a way out.
Twenty five years on, the scars that the survivors carry still ache. In the mark left on Captain Devi Sharan’s (Vijay Varma) neck where a pistol was pressed for endless hours,which is still visible. As well as those invisible to the naked eye, on the souls of those who could see clearly the need to take tough calls, but were not able to for reasons that the six-part series tries to unpack.
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One of the most effective elements of the series, which gets better as it goes along (a certain degree of slackness in the first four is made up for the last two, which are absolutely terrific), is the restraint it manages to sustain: keeping high-pitched melodrama at bay, and even more importantly, keeping the background music muted, letting us focus on the action, which is split between the interiors of the airbus, and the high-powered rooms in New Delhi where multiple meetings, fuelled with adrenaline and caffeine, are underway.
The other is the way in which the politics of the time — Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the PM, Jaswant Singh was the Foreign Minister, and India did not recognise the Taliban government in Afghanistan — is played out in the defusing of the crisis.
Some of the courage in being able to spotlight what was seen as a massive blow to India’s tough stance against terrorism is clearly because a few of the principal players have either faded into oblivion or have fallen out of favour of the present ruling dispensation. The hijackers, who were given support by Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, demanded the release of many of their compatriots, including Harkat-ul-Mujahideen leader Masoor Azhar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, who were in Indian prisons. The mutterings of ‘we will not do this, whatever the cost’ were quieted, and the exchange — hostages for dreaded terrorists — went through.
We see the backroom dealings, with its many pushes and pulls, the failure of Indian intelligence agencies, with IB and RAW officials going at each other, and the babus busy trying to push the bad news as far away as possible ( the PM was informed of the hijack several hours after it happened) : Naseeruddin Shah and Pankaj Kapur (standing in for Jaswant Singh) trade information, which could have been more pointed, spending as they do more time in walking to and fro between their stations : the two speak in undertones, mentioning ‘PM Sa’ab’, but their portions remains maddeningly opaque, except a climactic breakout scene which Kapur owns. The weightier barbs and dickering happens takes place between the men whose diplomatic and negotiating skills carry the day– Arvind Swami, whom we must see more of, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa ( wonderful, as always, in a Sinha project), and Dibyendu Bhattacharya.
Anupam Tripathi is effective as an intelligence officer based in Kathmandu, where this whole thing starts, getting to run about in dark alleys and uncover unpalatable truths ; so is the ever-reliable Yashpal Sharma softening one of the terrorists on the hijackers’ wish-list, slipping in a sliver of menace in his affable demeanour. In all of this– a crowded canvas and a large ensemble– an actor like Kanwaljeet barely gets a look-in, which feels like a waste.
The part where the show nearly lost me is when it turns to two journalists, played by Dia Mirza and Amrita Puri, who are shown bickering over how to cover the story: how much to reveal, and how much to conceal, especially when a crisis is unfolding, in the interests of containing public hysteria, is something real-life newsrooms deal with all the time. But Hindi cinema and its creators just do not know how to do this aspect with any believability, so maybe they should desist.
And perhaps the overall tone could have been sharper, but given that the same party is in power, even this much seems brave, especially where it’s made clear that the NSG ( headed by Sushant Singh in an all too-brief appearance) arrived too late for a rescue operation, where it’s shown how the bureaucrats dithered and delayed, and how the powers that be buckled in and released the three terrorists, and were even escorted by FM Jaswant Singh ( we see a glimpse of the real-life Singh, as well as Vajpayee in the series) to Kandhar.
It’s only fitting then that the real heroes, confined to the plane, win big. Imagine yourself in an enclosed space, overrun by unstable men and weapons, sanitation gone for a toss, toilets clogged and overflowing, and unbearable stench : how would you deal with it? The responsibility for keeping everyone calm was down to the crew. Vijay Varma is outstanding as the beleaguered captain who powers through the ordeal, despite the very-real fear of the unthinkable : what if they all die? The two air-hostesses who keep their flock together are played well by Patralekha and Additi Gupta Chopra, the latter much better in some bits.
IC 814 is handsomely produced and directed, for the most part, with acuity. There have been many Indian films on terrorists and hostage situations, and some have been better than the others. This one keeps it grounded, even when it’s in the air, and manages to distribute the tension evenly through-out.
Even after so many years, we are grateful for the lives that were saved, layered with a sober realisation of what the operation, whose deepest layers will forever stay hidden, resulted in.
Win some, lose some.
IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack
IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack cast – Vijay Varma, Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Patralekha Paul, Additi Gupta Chopra, Arvind Swami, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Anupam Tripathi, Dia Mirza, Armita Puri, Aditya Srivastava, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Yashpal Sharma, Kanwaljeet, Sushant Singh
IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack director – Anubhav Sinha
IC 814: The Kandhar Hijack rating – 3 stars
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