The pens behind the guns

While most of us are going gaga over the actors joining Rohit Shettyrsquos ldquocop universerdquo there are two new entrants to the same world who have been quietly working behind the scenes patiently shaping it scene by sceneMeet Sandeep Saket and Anusha Nandakumar both part of the writersrsquo room of the sevenepisode series Indian Police Force IPF set to hit Prime Video on January 19 They met at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute while they were studying writing and love blossomed leading to marriage Today the couple has a string of achievements to their name and they are just getting startedldquoMy maternal grandfather was a filmmakerrdquo says Nandakumar who was born and brought up in Pune ldquoand I grew up listening to stories of what would happen on the set But it was only when I got involved with the cultural committee at Fergusson College that the film bug truly bit merdquoIf you thought the name sounded familiar you wouldnrsquot be wrong Nandkumar is one of the three cofounders of the online comedy content platform Bharatiya Digital Party responsible for many a chuckle among the Marathi audience ldquoWe were creating content every day and I grew to love writing I applied for a direction and film writing course at Satyajit Ray and down the line also found that I loved writing fiction more than nonfictionrdquo she saysThe soontorelease web series has several new additions to the already expanding lsquocop universersquo including Siddharth Malhotra and Sharad Kelkar File picSaket too had his own journey of selfdiscovery ldquoI met a lot of people from the film and theatre space while pursuing my Bachelorrsquos in History at the Hindu College in Delhi which set me on my chosen path I chose screenwriting as a course at Satyajit Ray but in reality screenwriting chose me It is a relationship we are still discovering each otherrdquo he says and it takes us a minute to realise hersquos not referring to Nandakumar WritersIPF though grand and muchawaited is hardly their first rodeo They were also part of the writersrsquo room for Kala Paani which recently released on Netflix and is receiving critical acclaim Before that in 2021 they also published their first book The War That Made RampAW which focuses on the formation of Indiarsquos counterterrorism agency under spymaster RN Kao and its work during the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh from PakistanldquoWe approached writing the book the way we would write a screenplayrdquo recalls Nandakumar ldquoWe did need some handholding through the process but we were doing what we love doing best telling a storyrdquoWith Shettyrsquos cop universe they say the challenge lies in taking reallife heroes and writing their stories for the reel which is easier said than done The couple says that most of the characters and incidents in IPF are all based on real lifeldquoThere are umpteen number of films both in India and in global cinema about cops and the work they do Storytelling itself as an art is not a new one it is as old as humanity What we are doing today is based on templates established in the past The trick is identifying that one unique aspect in every story and making that your strongest point A cop that we talk to may only cursorily describe a chase sequence because thatrsquos all it was to him Drawing out the drama becomes our jobrdquo says SaketldquoIn other casesrdquo says Nandakumar ldquothe cop is already a massive hero in real life and the challenge is to find the right story from their already dramatic life So instead of pulsating action sequences we find that emotional connect that pushed them to do their jobrdquoThey are already working on the next instalment of the Singham franchise as well as several other projects that have them all charged up with excitement With the mention of the next Singham film we canrsquot help but ask them about their take on accusations of ldquocopagandardquo or the attempts at shaping the opinion of the police in the peoplersquos minds using popular culture A recently released poster for Singham 3 showed Deepika Padukone shoving a handgun in a criminalrsquos mouth while smiling gleefully The poster sparked off a heated debate about encounter culture and its cinematic depictionldquoAre encounters a more effective way of policing I am not very sure but my job is to tell the storyrdquo says a pensive Saket ldquoWe live in the age of social media where everything is the subject of intense debate This too requires a debate on a larger and public forum so that we can all learn from it Thanks to social media people will not make statements today that they would casually make ten years ago Why Because they know it is wrong that it bothers people Likewise if we learn something about our own subject from a wider discussion we can take cues from the present instead of relying on templates made in the pastrdquoNandakumar chips in with her own take ldquoIf yoursquore writing for a Rohit Shetty you have to understand that his vision is pure entertainment There is another project we are working on where the protagonist is an imperfect policeman and gets a lot of flak for it too A third one in the offing looks at policing in yet another completely different way There are different cops and hence there have to be different conversations But yes there really needs to be a larger conversation and debaterdquo she says