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On Saturday, February 22, as part of the Homegrown Festival, we'll be hosting an exclusive panel with the cast and crew of 'Black Warrant' themselves. The panel will include showrunner Vikramaditya Motwane, cast member Anurag Thakur, director Ambiecka Pandit, composer Ajay Jayanthi, and editor Tanya Chhabria.
A claret red sprays through the air of the courtyard of Tihar Prison and a blood-splashed jailer, Sunil Gupta, is stupified. He watches in abject horror as a prisoner writhes on the ground after being slashed in the face by a fellow inmate following a dispute about who killed a snake, no less.
What are the forces that compel people to break bad and inflict harm on their fellow human beings? How do you break vicious cycles of violence, corruption, hate, and apathy that are socially entrenched and embedded in the very fabric of our societies? Should prisons and our legal system as a whole aim to isolate, eliminate, punish, or reform even the worst offenders?
These are questions that have plagued civil society for generations. From politicians to princes; thought leaders to small-town sheriffs; political scientists to inner-city teachers; not one person has come up with a truly definitive answer. Violence and crime — both petty and major — continue to exist and even thrive in a world where the gap between the haves and the have-nots expands every single day.
Beyond Good & Evil
One way to describe Netflix’s ‘Black Warrant’ would be to call it a ‘gritty’ prison period drama. It’s set during the chaos of the 1980s and highlights India’s underbelly of apathy, bigotry, greed, and corruption, through the lens of Delhi’s infamous Tihar Jail. As the show unfolds, however, you learn just how much of an oversimplification that boilerplate synopsis is.
At its core, the show and the people behind it understand that taking a ‘pious’ or ‘holier-than-thou’ view of crime and punishment, particularly in a country as complex and inequitable as India, is an exercise in futility. It refuses to pass judgment on any of the inmates it depicts and instead presents a layered view of the circumstances and conditions that lead them to prison in the first place. It shows us that the walls that separate a murderer on death row and a seemingly ‘mild-mannered’ doctor are far thinner than anyone could ever imagine. They’re also held up by duct tape that’s made of a combination of privilege, fate, and good old-fashioned blind luck.
From the random acts of kindness to abject violence to the power dynamics between the jailers and the prisoners to the entrenched casteism and communalism, the show’s depiction of Tihar shows us the good, the bad, and the ugliest sides of humanity. In many ways, it is a microcosm of society as a whole — including in the way it's stratified. It succeeds in bringing a realistic lens of humanity to the backdrop of a prison. Black Warrant shows us that even the most violent murderers are as ‘human’ as anyone else. They hurt, they laugh, they love, and they despair, just like us. It makes you empathise with them, but only to a point — and that’s where you remember what they’re in jail for in the first place. The show is able to navigate treacherous waters; spotlighting the humanity in people who commit acts of violence or depravity without necessarily condoning their actions.
Subverting The Mainstream (Again)
Black Warrant’s showrunner, Vikramaditya Motwane, is not a man who wastes words, time, or space. Across a body of work that spans the better part of three decades, it’s clear that there’s a thoughtful ‘deliberateness’ to everything he creates that gives it weight, poise, and impact. From his early work on projects like 'Dev.D' to his subliminal and pathbreaking directorial work in 2020’s criminally underrated 'AK vs AK', Motwane’s evolution has shown homegrown the film and television landscape that it is possible to strike a balance between artistic subversion and mainstream appeal.
Whether he’s producing, directing, writing or show running, he’s able to almost antithetically use darkness as a conduit that contrasts and shows us precisely what’s worth fighting for — despite the ever-looming spectres of evil that exist in our world. “When I’m showrunning and not directing, my only focus is the character arcs and the tonal consistency of the characters that are being depicted,” he explains. “I think I’ve become quicker over a period of time; I take less time to shoot. Overall I’ve started to be less involved in the minutia of filmmaking. In the beginning, you tend to hover over people’s shoulders a little. I think I’ve stopped doing that now. I trust my partners and my HODs more.”
"Vikram sir is a master of his craft and has decades worth of experience which allows him to be confident in his approach while also giving us the freedom to figure things out in the moment,” attests the show’s lead actor Zahan Kapoor. “He’s incredibly meticulous and inspires the same thoroughness from everyone around him.”
Adapting An Era
The narrative of Black Warrant’ unfolds through the real-life turmoil of the 80s and many events tie into the plots and subplots of each episode. It’s been noted that the 80s was an era that saw a rather stark uptick in violent crime, from Auto Shankar to the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders, to Ranga-Billa. It was an era that also saw political shifts, the aftermath of Emergency, and a country that was slowly coming out of the relative geo-political isolation of its past. We see how the world outside the isolated walls of Tihar has a snowball effect on the internal dynamics within the jail. It’s also a tall order from a storytelling point of view to create a cohesive narrative like from the non-fiction book that its events were adapted from, 2019’s ‘Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer’ by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury. This challenge is not something that the show’s creators took lightly.
“We had to create certain fictitious characters and events through which to connect these true incidents,” says co-creator Satyanshu Singh. “The biggest challenge was figuring out the timespan that the show would take place during. We decided to cover only the first four years of Sunil Gupta’s career. There are events mentioned in the book that took place outside the prison but we chose to stick to things that happened within the physical space of Tihar in the 80s. Those decisions were vital because once we did that, things were much easier and more streamlined.”
“As you go through the book you see many events tied to Tihar that shaped modern Indian history – from Ranga Billa to the JNU escape,” adds Motwane. “Sunil Gupta as a protagonist is also supremely interesting. He’s the most unlikely hero and you’re never sure whether he’s going to sink or swim and that’s exactly what draws you in.”
Zahan Kapoor’s exceptionally nuanced portrayal of Sunil channels the full measure of the angst, uncertainty, naivete and confustion that comes with being a ‘righteous’ man in a house of wolves. It’s a situation that he says mirrored the responsibility that Vikramaditya Motwane thrust upon him by giving him the role of a lifetime. “There is always a mix of deep personal truth and genuine empathetic curiosity in any role,” says Zahan. “With this character, I did see paralell between both myself and Sunil. I felt a little overwhelmed because I was stepping into a new world and I had a large responsibility on my shoulders. This is the largest role of my career so far and I was stretching myself in more ways than one.”
The show’s supporting cast particularly Paramvir Singh Cheema and Anurag Thakur who play Sunil’s jailhouse partners and narrative foils do a tremendous amount to reinforce a palpable sense of warmth and familiarity despite the gloom of Tihar. There’s a chemistry between the three of them that jumps off the screen and offers audiences a reprieve from the heaviness of the show as a whole. Zahan emhpasises his appreciation for the whole cast and lauds their collective deduction to bringing the narrative of the show to life. “We were thankfully all on the same page when it came to the desire to serve the story,” he explains. “The overall atmosphere on set was very conducive to a spirit of ego-less collaboration.”
Satyanshu underlines that what attracted him to adapting Sunil’s book in the first place was the colour of the stories within it and their relevance to modern sociopolitical issues.“ They were often funny and had a lot of humanity but they are also incredibly heartbreaking, bleak and grim,” he explains. “Around the time I was reading the book, I was also in the middle of a graduation course in humanities. I had courses like history, and political science, as well as ethics and moral philosophy as my subjects. As I read through the book, I realised that it incorporated all of this. There’s political science, the sociology of the jail; and how it mirrors the society outside its walls, there’s historical context, and it fundamentally talks about the ethics of crime, punishment, and justice. In that way, it was a project that felt right to me.”
The music in Black Warrant is a fluid interpretation of the show's themes and the time in which it exists. Composer Ajay Jayanthi worked with the show’s directors and editor Tanya Chhabria to create music that could relay both darkness and levity; wherever required. “For me, 'Black Warrant' is a unique show because each episode has a very different underlying mood,” explains Ajay. “It was quite crucial to create a palette that could easily traverse the gritty plot while adding quirk when needed.”
Everything you hear as the show runs its course is immediately reminiscent of something you’d hear in the 80s and even the electronic sounds featured, draw on analogue sources as opposed to digital ones. As a result, it doesn’t feel like a show that’s ‘trying’ to be set in the 80s. The sounds that envelope you hear work in tandem with the plot to create a deliberate, understated, and authentic sonic time capsule of the 80s. “I got to work with my indie musician friends to give it a more rustic touch,” says Ajay. “Most of the incredible guitars you hear are Keshav Parthasarathy’s work, while Hrishi Giridhar played on the title theme. The music also features other indie artists like Chaitanya Pandit, Nirmit Shah, Sambit Chatterjee, and Ramya Kirtana. The two Punjabi folk songs I composed owe their authenticity to the fabulous Anvitaa Dutt’s profound lyrics and a masterclass of a performance by singer Devenderpal Singh.”
Seeing Grey
When dealing with this sort of subject matter, there’s always a risk of dramatising events and turning their protagonists and antagonists into caricatures. Black Warrant, however, is an impeccable exercise in creative restraint.
“Satyanshu and I just aren’t the kind of people who’d want to overly dramatise anything,” says Motwane. “At no point in time would we ever want to portray things as cardboard cutouts. For us, everything is grey. That’s a tenet we adhered to across the board, especially when depicting the Ranga-Billa hanging. We wanted to ask: ‘What is the truth?’”
Motwane elaborates even further, explaining that they approached the whole series from that perspective. “We wanted to strike a balance; to never sermonise; and to never tell our audience what to think or how to feel about events. You invest yourself in people’s lives, you go into their worlds, and then you come to a decision about the hows, the whats, and the whys.”
Ambiecka Pandit, who directed episode four, ‘Team Player’, magnificently captured the claustrophobic atmosphere of a prison but also included little cinematographical flourishes in key scenes that seem to be nods to one of the show's overarching themes: there’s a light that can be found even within the most oppressive darkness. “In India, jails are exactly like Black Warrant shows them,” she explains. “They are dark and brutal but it is also where life happens. For us, the beauty came from this contrast itself.”
This contrast between darkness and light is personified perfectly in the way the show’s interior and exterior shots act as foils to one another. The corridors, offices, and cells of Tihar are drab, claustrophobic and cold; there’s a sense of forbidding that lurks in every crevice. At night, the prison’s gloom is all pervasive and is emphasised by the gloom of its sparse artificial light. The show’s exterior shots of the prison’s grounds and gardens however, give viewers an uncanny sense of calmness and serenity. The inmates work their individual jobs in the gardens, stroll around in conversation and even enjoy a game or two of badminton. The sun shines bright and illuminates each scene, but it’s never harsh, sweltering, or in your face. This dynamic interplay of tension and release allows the show visually emphasise its ambitious undylering thematic balancing act.
This theme is also expanded on through the relationship and evolving worldviews of the three jailers. Despite coming from extremely disparate backgrounds, each of them find common ground and learn to work together over the course of the first three episodes, in spite of their differences. One of the best parts of the show for me was watching them find shelter from the chaos and darkness within each other. They start out as strangers, forced to work together in a cruel and unfamiliar new environment but slowly learn to adapt to their surroundings by leaning on their bond.
Episode four, however, is where it all seemingly comes undone. “To my mind,” says Ambeicka, “the gravity of the fight between Dahiya and Sunil comes from the strength of their bond up until that point. When we see these two friends joking around, learning from each other, and having each other’s back and we have empathy for their respective circumstances. The fight feels even more heartbreaking because we know they love and care for each other. Consequently, we can understand that this hurt will also run deep. Dahiya and Sunil have fostered a special bond. Dahiya is protective of Sunil. He wants Sunil to ‘toughen up’ so he can survive life working in a jail. At the same time, Sunil is protective of Dahiya. He wants Dahiya to be smart about the decisions he makes so his recklessness does not reck his career. I loved working with the changing interpersonal dynamics of ‘Gehre Dost’.”
A particularly powerful episode in the series is ‘Gallows’, which focuses on the horrifying Geeta and Sanjay Chopra kidnapping and murder case and its perpetrators Kuljeet Singh and Jasbir Singh aka Ranga and Billa. Its depiction of the enactment of the death penalty is riveting, powerful, nauseating and horrifying all at once. Without giving too much away, the scenes between Sunil and journalist Pratibha Sen beautifully personify the polarising nature of the death penalty itself and we the audience find ourselves flitting between both of their equally valid perspectives.
“When you see it from Sunil’s lens, you see he’s confused and conflicted,” says Motwane. “We wanted to make the audience as conflicted as him about whether what’s currently happening is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. No one’s doubting that a horrific crime was committed, that Geeta and Sanjay Chopra are no more and that it was an absolute tragedy. The question that lingers is whether what is happening now is the right answer for what happened then.”
Capital punishment is about as divisive a subject as you can think of when it comes to penal systems the world over. In India, the death penalty is reserved for the most severe crimes and for the “rarest of rare cases”, every year we see incident after incident that shakes the conviction of the death penalty's most fervent critics. Incidents like the recent RG Kar Medical College rape and murder call into question how much things have changed with regard to both the necessity and ethics of the death penalty in India.
“We still have it as a country but no one really knows how much of a deterrent it really is,” says Motwane. “The Nirbhaya rapists were hung but it’s not like that did anything to change what happened in Kolkata. The argument on the other side, is that maybe proof of the deterrent is the fact that more rapes don’t happen because the death penalty exists. That’s a really pessimistic argument but I’m sure some people would make it. It’s honestly really tough to tell right now.”
Breaking The Chain
In the process of laying bare the complexity of our prison systems, the show also highlights the colonial hangover and systemic rot that exists across our institutions. Some of the most glaring issues that face our prisons are direct parallels to what we see every day, from caste discrimination to classism to mind-numbing bureaucracy. “We can blame colonialism but we can also go beyond and blame our own societal structures and the fact that we have all these hierarchies in the first place,” points out Motwane. “It’s that classic mentality that says it’s always someone else’s job and not your own. I think that apathy applies to everyone.”
While Tihar and its administration become a microcosm of the worst aspects of civil society, it also offers a glimmer of hope through protagonists like Sunil, who strive to do good, despite all that’s thrown at him and despite the fact that he’s by a fish out of water surrounded by a gathering darkness.
Fundamentally, Black Warrant is not about prison; it’s about us. It’s about brotherhood and sworn enemies. It’s about togetherness and separation. It’s about family and the weight of expectation. It’s about belonging and isolation. It’s about the good ordinary people can bring to the world by putting aside their baggage and working together instead of trying to piss in the wind alone. The show’s powerful refusal to moralise allows it to depict the best and worst of humanity while holding a mirror up to who we all are as people. It emphatically underlines that we are, all at once, the monsters we fear and the heroes we need to be.
'Black Warrant' is now streaming on Netflix.
