Vaibhav Modi: Maybe our next will be along the lines of James Bond

What is the advantage of a producer writing his own scripts Vaibhav Modi who has penned the script of Mukhbir mdash The Story Of A Spy believes it helps ldquomaximise impactrdquo Modi who has earlier written popular web shows including Bekaaboo and Love By Chance and featured on Coke Studio in tandem with other writers has adapted Maloy Dharrsquos novel Mission to Kashmir An Intelligent Agent In Pakistan for his latest screen offering The ZEE5 series revolves around a secret agent who helped India get the upper hand in the 1965 war by providing intelligence In a candid chat with midday Modi talks about the essential aspects of making a spy thrillerEdited excerpts from the interviewIs there an advantage to writing your own production ventureLargely yes Sometimes a writer mdash writing in isolation and then passing it on to the team mdash leaves a lot to be desired because the resources might limit him On other occasions the director may have a different vision or an actor might want to perform in a different manner But when you are a producer you are informed at every stage So it is easier to pass on what you have in mind I know the resources and my limitations So to write from a producerrsquos lens does not always mean cutting costs it also means maximising impactWhen writing an espionage thriller like Mukhbir what are you mindful aboutI am careful about three factors You should stay away from obviousness How many films have we seen where a cop enters a crime scene and someone tries to tell him that something has happened So I found another way to say the same thing The other factor is authenticity The third factor is the precision of spoken word In a spy thriller when people are communicating you cannot be generic about things nor can you go into dialoguebaazi In the series not once will you hear lsquoHamare desh ki shaanrsquo or lsquoHamara jhandarsquo because the men who are protecting the country do not talk like that For them it is a duty that needs to be done with efficiencyAlso ReadLooks like Atif Aslam talks like Fawad Khan Barkha Bisht on first impression of Mukhbir costar Zain Khan DurraniHow much of director Shivam Nairrsquos input helped mould the scriptWhen Shivam Nair and I met we were both trying to get into the zone of the series The moment I started writing it felt like he had adopted me We started feeding off not just each otherrsquos experiences but also our lives He walked me through anecdotes from his life which gave a sneak peek into the intelligence world I used to quote examples from my parentsrsquo lives who were with All India Radio They were the closest window to the era of 1965Instead of resorting to jingoism yoursquove etched all characters including the Pakistanis with depthMukhbir is set in 1965 just a few years after the Partition One of my favourite dialogues is when Harfanrsquos Zain Khan Durranirsquos character aunt tells her motherinlaw ldquoPolice harr din elaan karti hai ki Indians se hoshiyar raherdquo The woman says ldquoJab boriyon mein bartan bhar ke aaye thhe hum bhi Indian hi thherdquo People are humans first and then defined by religion or national border That contributes to our spyrsquos dilemma He starts realising that he is stealing information from wellmeaning simple people He starts growing roots That is the storyrsquos complexity If we didnrsquot do that it would weigh a little less on your mind It is easy to make a Pakistani General caricaturish Mukhbir is more about the world of the character than his journey Wersquove tried to give every character depth so that the ground my protagonist is walking on seems real and nuanced Maybe our next spy thriller will be more along the lines of a James Bond thriller laughsYou have a stellar cast on board Prakash Raj and Adil Hussain have such a rich body of work Shivam Jayprad Desai codirector and I approached these actors without getting influenced by their social media popularity or if theyrsquove done similar roles in the past Nowadays actors are cast from a limited pool We consciously worked away from that