Figuring out how Neeraj Pandey’s thriller about smugglers feels like such an airport bestseller, and yet so brilliantly researched
Emraan Hashmi (right) in a still from the crime thriller series ‘Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web’. PIC/Netflix
Recall that scene in Neeraj Pandey’s series, Taskaree (Netflix), where the customs superintendent, Arjun Meena (Emraan Hashmi), tells his female asset, Priya (Zoya Afroz), that if they execute the espionage plan he has in mind, she’ll have to move out of her current location, Al Dera (that’s meant to be Dubai).
“Where will I live then,” she asks. “That’s what I’m thinking,” he says. She’s hot. He’s Hashmi. Both look over Mumbai’s skyline.
At this point, I thought, if this was a 2005 Bollywood film — that scene would break into ‘serial-kisser’ Hashmi, striding down UAE desert, along with his heroine, lip-syncing to a melodiously Sufi song!
The sorts that make one go: “Saara Bollywood ek taraf. Aur Emraan Hashmi ek taraf!”
Taskaree’s set within Mumbai’s relatively bland international airport, where Hashmi marks his entry, with back towards the camera, dressed in customs uniform. It’s still zanier, more entertaining than most Hindi movies.
Chiefly, for how well-researched it simultaneously feels — making me wonder, instead, if this is how it really works along the conveyor-belt, baggage-scan, and green channel, between the “popat” (courier), with “punters” (who finance them), and officers, at the other end, who use KK (“Kya karoge”), “puri” (for envelope) as code-words for bribe.
The show’s co-writer, Vipul K Rawal
“Every profession has its own internal jargons,” Taskaree’s co-writer, Vipul K Rawal, who used to be a sailor with the Indian Navy, tells me.
Early on in his screenwriting career, I learn from Rawal, he’d himself, unwittingly, become victim of a smuggling of sorts.
As in, he’d written a script on sports, based on a true-life story, that he’d narrated to several filmmakers, including Nagesh Kukunoor, who was then ostensibly working on Hyderabad Blues 2.
Later, Rawal discovered promos for Kukunoor’s Iqbal (2005), which was essentially Rawal’s story, with hockey interchanged with cricket!
Young Rawal used to then burn the midnight oil, working at Wipro’s call-centre. He spent his day pitching scripts.
One of the nights, Rawal says, he got handed a sum of R3 lakh, that was way above his annual salary, to shut up about Iqbal, and move on. He did; subsequently, with credit for the film’s story.
Reversely, and more recently, Rawal tells me, he fought hard to withdraw his name from the writing credit for Batti Gul Meter Chalu (2018), because the “rehash” hardly matched his research!
With Taskaree, there was the pleasanter problem of plenty.
He says, “We’ve barely scratched the surface. There’s so much to explore even in [unknown] corners and crannies of the airport.” Something he intends to do with the sequel that, in all likelihood, would get greenlit.
Over four years of homework for Taskaree, Rawal had access to both retired customs officers, and smugglers. Their anecdotes and modus operandi made it to the series.
Which, evidently, began with the setting (the wonderfully recreated Mumbai airport), before the story itself — that involves “rare species”, inching towards extinction.
That is, honest customs officers, tasked with cleaning up the system, and nabbing smugglers who, essentially, benefit from tax-gaps between nations, to illegally import products for local sales/consumption.
While they’re all fine actors on the show, somehow, I found the customs officer leads beside Hashmi in the ensemble cast — Nandish Sandhu (as Ravinder Gujjar), Anurag Sinha (Prakash Kumar), even the asset/informer, doubling up as flight-attendant, Zoya Afroz (Priya) — looking so perfectly groomed and pristine that they could be AI-recreated images!
Jokes apart, I was obviously gladdest to note the presence of my close friend, Sumit Nijhawan, as the confidently understated Anna, who runs the underground gold-trade between Mumbai and Al Dera — under his badass boss, Bada Choudhary (Sharad Kelkar) in Italy’s Lake Como, married to a former super-model, and with a fun backstory that plays out like a Frank Miller graphic art.
Nice touch, there. Never so over-the-top with grotesquery for violence that the series ever looks extra. The thriller always feels like an airport bestseller.
Gold smuggling is, of course, merely the metaphor. The profit margins are hardly what they used to be when Bollywood’s ‘loin’ Ajit was the smuggler, dropping consignments at Madh island!
That said, Rawal tells me, “In Dubai, there are gold souks (marketplaces), where you buy gold in the ground floor, with karigars (artisans) in the upper floor, converting gold into buttons for jeans, spectacles, etc. There are also informers around these shops, who tip off customs officials, for a reward.”
When returning from foreign travel, at the customs, I usually have nothing to declare, but my poverty. It’s still surprising to learn from the series that the lower-limit for dutiable goods to declare is Rs 50,000. Many of us might be offenders.
Rawal says, “The officers usually just let you go, up until a reasonable amount, anyway. Some of the richest people get kicks out of [illegally] shipping in high-value products still.”
There’s an IPL cricketer in Taskaree, who gets caught, because of VAT-reclaimed receipts from the site of purchase. “That’s based on a popular Bollywood star. You can google the name/case,” Rawal reveals.
Rawal’s last collab with director Neeraj Pandey was the film, Sikander Ka Muqaddar (2024, Netflix), that I’d watched right after Pandey’s Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha (2024, Prime Video), wondering aloud: WTF?
After Taskaree, more than anything else, must say, welcome back, Pandey Ji!
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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