The sign of a good story is in how it treats its antagonists. Some stories demand a nuanced exploration of complex emotions and behaviours. They need to be told through multiple perspectives to zero-in on the truth. The web series Lootere, written by Vishal Kapoor and Suparn Varma, tries to do much more.
Disguised as a hijack-thriller, the show delves into some pertinent questions concerning morality, greed, oppression and everything in between. Among its many virtues, one thing that stands out is the humanisation of the supposed “bad guys”.
The show features a bunch of Somalian pirates who set out to hijack a ship. But they aren’t just evil men. We get a peek inside a home where a young man is attending to his ill mother as he is called by others to join the mission. There is ambition in them as well as brotherhood, shaped by the conditions they are living in.
All of this was a conscious decision from the writers to humanize the pirates. Vishal feels that all the characters needed to be more than just names on paper. “The motive was to show where they are coming from, what kind of a world they inhabit,” he says. “It’s only when we know them as humans, that we will care about them.”
A good story is also about collaboration. The understanding between co-creators lends many flavours to the final material. Vishal and Suparn started writing the show in 2019 and it was in 2021 that Jai Mehta came on board as the director.
Two years had passed in between and when Vishal spoke to Jai in June that year, the story was reignited. Now, the character of Vikrant Gandhi (Vivek Gomber) was given more prominence. “I spoke to Jai and he had a completely new outlook towards the show,” he says.
“The earlier idea was more centred around the crew and the hostage situation. Jai thought of exploring the character of Vikrant as it was not given much attention earlier. I was thrilled.”
They were told that the shoot will commence some months later in September and will take place in South Africa. Vishal was working on another project at that time which he finished to write Lootere. “We started discussing the script and it became a collective effort as we were running out of time,” the writer says. “A lot of writing happened during the shoot. We just had 4 episodes when the shoot started.”
He shares the hectic experience of writing the rest of the episodes in the middle of the pandemic in 2021 and in a foreign country. During the day, Vishal would sit in the hotel room as the team went out for recce. “At the end of the day, when Jai would come back, we would discuss the material and make changes right there,” he says. “It was a chaotic process and we started thriving in that. Though it is absolutely not advisable to work like this,” he smiles.
Among other things, it was also Jai’s suggestion to have a specific tone to the dialogues. Be it the wicked adage right at the beginning by Vikrant when he says, "apna sapna poora karne ke liye jeb me paise nahi, jigar me hausla hona chahiye" (In order to chase your dreams, you don’t need money in your pocket, but power in your heart) or when another character exclaims a crucial line that would define the themes of the show. The latter was not even written on paper till the scene was about to be filmed.
“It was in my head for a long time but I didn’t write it as such on paper,” he says. “But as we were shooting the scene, I told Jai this line and he was surprised. For some reason, I was not able to make sense of it until the shoot day as I was giving cues to the actor. That’s when I figured it out.”
Vishal feels that being present on the set helps in coming up with new ideas. He also presses on the importance of receiving feedback as a writer. According to him, it is natural to get attached to the characters and lose objectivity.
“That’s where feedback helps, from people who are associated with the project and also from those who are not associated with it,” he says, adding that his wife reads almost everything he writes which helps to ascertain if it is working. Interestingly, while working on the screenplay for his first film, Lapachhapi (2016), which was about a pregnant woman, his wife was about to give birth to their child and gave him important feedback about the main character.
It was the constant feedback and discussions that helped in solidifying the core of the story in Lootere. They were steadfast in not letting it become just another show. “We were determined to create something new and break certain boundaries,” Vishal says. He feels it was also possible because the crew was quite young and hence boiling with creative ideas.
“There were innovations in the writing, in the way Jai directed it and how it was filmed by Jall Cowasji, the cinematographer. We had a huge amount of freedom while working. It was a collective effort. It would be great to come together again for a project like this,” he signs off.