Spies aren’t exactly covert in movies. They will fistfight on top of a running train, dangle from an airplane and chase through a busy bazaar, ready to feature in headlines the next morning. They will be good looking, charming, riding a car whose engine roars not so subtly with a woman on their arm that can turn heads. But as John Le Carre often wrote about, real spy-work isn’t that glamorous. It’s less expensive suits and futuristic gadgets, more tracing calls and analysing heaps of documents. “Growing up, I thought a spy is a guy with the most swag,” says Pratik Gandhi. “He can get into any building, steal anything and never get caught. If need be, he can also fight in the middle of the street and still nobody would recognise him. And I used to think, why is nobody noticing this guy? Hasn’t he just blown his cover?”
The actor will be seen playing a stealthier R&AW agent in the upcoming espionage-thriller series Saare Jahan Se Accha. He will be locking horns with Sunny Hinduja in the role of his slithery ISI counterpart, while Anup Soni completes the trio in the role of a compromised Pakistani military general.
The Netflix show is set in the 1970s, during the cold war between India and Pakistan post Bangladesh’s liberation. The newly formed Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) is keeping a hawk’s eye on their neighbouring country’s nuclear dreams. Espionage paraphernalia consists of morse-code transmitters, cameras camouflaging as cigarette lighters and messages hidden inside soap bars. “I remember watching the Dharmendra-starrer Charas (1976) when young,” says Anup. “The heel of his shoe would twist open to reveal a transmitter. It was so fascinating.” Sunny also shares his first interaction with the spy genre. “Shaktimaan won’t count right?” he says with a laugh. “But that’s actually what I thought spying was! You just change your hairstyle, wear spectacles and camouflage.”
But intelligence gathering is more complicated than that. It has a human cost that goes beyond mission objectives. Agents, living under false identities, might forget who they actually are. “The world of Saare Jahan Se Accha felt real. It was not the story of a spy, but of a human who happened to be a spy,” shares Pratik. “What interested me was the layering of my character. He can’t share his woes to his family or friends and to process such sensitive information on his own, the emotional turmoil of that, it intrigued me.”
“Spy work is so high stakes that sometimes agents can’t even live their own emotions,” adds Sunny. “We see spies in films, firing guns and jumping off helicopters. But what do they actually feel? What is their internal life?”
“Coming forward to be ‘the hero’ might be the last thing a spy would do,” says Anup.
Then there is also the politics of such films and shows. In the current political environment, often, war and espionage films become vehicles of bigotry. The “enemy” characters aren’t fleshed out and appear to be caricatures, without credible motivations or depth. “I always take a narration from the makers to understand their intent,” explains Pratik. “While I do read the script, often things get lost in translation.” Anup says that it doesn’t matter if a character seems jingoistic, provided he has reasons to be so. “I don’t have any problem in playing one,” he says. “If you look at characters essayed by both Pratik and Sunny, they are just two sides of the same coin. There is no right or wrong. It doesn’t matter if the jingoism is from one side or another, till it has a reason to be there.”
“It all boils down to what the makers want to say,” adds Sunny. “If things are being done only for an agenda, it is a futile exercise.” Anup agrees and adds that the viewer is smart enough to not fall for propaganda. “There are so many examples where audiences have rejected a story because it felt one-sided,” he says.
But with blind nationalism often being soft-sold through cinema, we wonder where does that leave space for patriotism. What do actors feel about it? “I think it is an internal feeling, it has no parameters, it can’t be measured,” says Pratik. “It is a sense of ownership, of belongingness to a land, to a nation and its people.” Sunny believes it is about being committed to your work. “No matter if you are an actor, a soldier or an office worker, fulfil your duty towards society and you are a patriot,” he says. Anup concludes. “I don’t have to prove my love towards my country to anybody,” he says. “In my everyday life, how I use my religion and my patriotism is more important than saluting and saying ‘Jai Hind’ every two minutes.”