THE BREAK-IN

Creators Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh talk Black Warrant, their creative collaboration after 15 years, and their Tihar experience

- KARTIK BHARDWAJ

Do peacocks visit Tihar? In the prison-drama series Black Warrant, the central jail might be slithering with both literal and metaphorical snakes but the peafowl becomes the symbol of hope. "Birds don't chirp there," says creator Satyanshu Singh, reminiscing the time when he, along with showrunner and co-creator Vikramaditya Motwane, had visited Tihar prison for research. "For some reason, they know this is not the right place," he adds. "But surprisingly, during our visit, we saw a peacock. It sat for thirty seconds and then flew away. That's when we knew we had to keep them in the show."

The Netflix series, based on the book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer by journalist Sunetra Chaudhary and former jail superintendent Sunil Gupta, stars Zahan Kapoor as the latter, young, wet-behind-the-ears jailer learning the ropes of Asia's biggest prison. He is bossed around by the calculative DSP Rajesh Tomar (Rahul Bhat) and has a live-wire Haryanvi Dahiya (Anurag Thakur) and a pacifying Punjabi Mangat (Paramvir Singh Cheema) as colleagues. "Everybody in Tihar, be it the prisoners or the jail staff, was a character straight out of a film," says Vikramaditya. "There was a muscular senior police official in a well-fitted uniform, a DSP who was in charge of the kitchen was a big film buff." Satyanshu adds, "And that too of world cinema. He was quoting (Akira) Kurosawa!"