Where did Nagesh disappear to?

I just called to say where are yourdquo I nearly croon to director Nagesh Kukunoor over the phone who tells me ldquoPublicly I just went off the radar sometime around 2019 mdash no interviews no social mediahellip The word toxic doesnrsquot even do justice to whatrsquos happening around us so I just decided to stay awayrdquoIn case yoursquore Gen Z but even then if yoursquore a film buff how would you not know mdash Kukunoor 58 is the OG man of desi middleoftheroad indiesStarting with Hyderabad Blues 1998 that inspired a generation of Englishspeaking folk to fiddle with the camera while he carried on with remarkably memorable work in Hindi especially until the mid2000s Rockford 3 Deewarein Iqbal DorHe tells me hersquos been even busier since ldquoWhat with having wrapped up six webseries over the past seven yearsrdquoThe one I called him right after watching is The Hunt The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case on the 90day probe between MayAugust 1991 to nab killers of the exPrime Minister of India mdash belonging to Sri Lankanbased militant group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LTTENagesh Kukunoor the seriesrsquo director PicInstagramItrsquos dropped on Sony LIV Itrsquos mainly set in Tamil Nadu Itrsquos certainly Kukunoorrsquos comeback of sorts And itrsquos simply stellarBut not as a breathless thriller with breathtaking action the kinda mood that Shoojit Sircar set for Madras Cafeacute 2013 on the same subjectOver seven episodes of roughly 45 minutes each Kukunoorrsquos The Hunt sticks to muted realism patiently like a police procedural where crime is not the point the investigation is As a genre itrsquos closest to Richie Mehtarsquos Delhi Crime 2019 which is really high praiseYou watch incredibly cast officers of the Special Investigation Team SIT navigate through LTTE sympathisers suspects and safehouses before they zeroin on the lsquoOneEyedJackrsquo Sivarasan Shafeeq Mustafa nicknamed after a 1961 Marlon Brando western This blokersquos so brazen he wants to get to J Jayalalithaa nextThis is also a series that grows on you before it peaks fifth episode onwardsKukunoor tells me the showrsquos tone essentially came from published groupphotographs of the said SIT officers ldquoThey looked like such unbelievably normal men that they could disappear in the background mdash in grey safari suits white shirts brown pantshelliprdquoClearly of the many things thatrsquos changed between India 1991 and 2025 is the safarisuit for work clothes especially in the government I wonder why it must certainly be comfier than proper suits for desi climateOne thing that hasnrsquot changed since I noticed in the series is the white 045 Reynolds penKukunoor adds ldquoThese men were still attached to the biggest manhunt in history I had to lens The Hunt likewise mdash washed out colours nobody must pop out from among the SIT with not even the camera as a dramatic part of the actionrdquoIn fact the series is pretty much in line with the superb Scam 1992 and Black Warrant mdash both along with The Hunt produced by Applause Sameer Nair Deepak Segal mdash based on journalistic works that make for compelling pieces of contemporary historyI havenrsquot read the bestseller reportage Ninety Days by Anirudhya Mitra that The Hunt is adapted from Kukunoor says ldquoThe book gave me lots of material to fit into longformatrdquoThat said access to official documents is nearabout impossible and as filmmaker he had ldquotoo many dots to join blanks to fillrdquo Which is where the writing team came into playI have once heard a scintillating Aaj Tak podcast on the investigation by retired police officer Amod Kanth SIT member played by Danish Iqbal in the series preciously detailing his days in Chennai Madras thenI wonder if Kukunoor reached out to the team directly as wellHe avoided that consciously ldquoThe problem is there are several points of view and I have read their books studied them enough to handle their portions with sensitivity Eventually you still have to move in one directionrdquo Also couple of the officers are no moreThe Hunt rather openly insinuates that there was a conspiracy to go slow on getting to the mastermind of Rajiv Gandhirsquos assassination if not protect him or his identity entirely PV Narasimha Rao had taken over as PM once Rajiv set to win the elections was no moreItrsquos been widely reported including in Neerja Chowdhuryrsquos brilliant book How Prime Ministers Decide that Rajivrsquos widow Sonia later a politician wasnrsquot happy with the way Rao was going about the caseIn the series this background produces onground one of the best anticlimaxes for a climax Of course not gonna tell you more besides that it ends with the SIT posing before photojournalists mdash the image that evidently inspired the showrsquos toneOh also I wanna know did actor Kukunoor never think of casting himself in the series He balks ldquoAbsolutely not There was a point when we were having trouble finding the actor for DR Kaarthikeyan the SIT bossldquoPeople began tossing around the idea that I should and that I look like him I said lsquoAre you madrsquoldquoAnd then we had Amit Sial in the role and I kept telling everyone on the set lsquoJust look at this guy look at what hersquos doing and what would I haversquordquo Sialrsquos splendid Couldnrsquot agree moreMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper