Series: Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War
Director: Oni Sen
Creators: Kushal Srivastava, Abhijeet Singh Parmar
Writers: Sandeep Jain, Nikhil Ravi, Barun Kashyap
Cast: Jimmy Shergill, Siddharth, Vinay Pathak, Manu Rishi Chadha, Abhay Verma, Harssh A. Singh, Adil Hussain, Barun Sobti
Music: Anurag Saikia, Amit Trivedi, Siddharth Pandit | Theme music: Anurag Saikia
Nearly three decades on, the Kargil War remains one of the most retold chapters of recent Indian history, and yet Operation Safed Sagar finds a corner of it that has stayed largely in the shadows. Oni Sen's six-part series turns its gaze upward, to the Indian Air Force, and astounds with fine performances, assured storytelling and casting that rarely puts a foot wrong.
The series opens out the question of what, exactly, the Air Force contributed to the defence of the country on the Kargil battlefield. What follows is an account built on meticulous planning and what the show frames as India's particular blessing; intelligence in numbers, minds working in concert under impossible pressure. It is here, the series suggests, that the war was held, at the very point where politics had failed. That argument gives the drama its spine, and Sen lets it build without hurry across the six episodes.
The ensemble is the series' greatest asset. Jimmy Shergill and Siddharth anchor the squadron with an easy authority, while Vinay Pathak and Manu Rishi Chadha, cast on the other side of the border as Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf respectively, are shrewdly chosen and never reduced to caricature. Abhay Verma and Harssh A. Singh hold their own in a cast where almost every role feels considered rather than filled.
For an Assamese viewer, the presence of Adil Hussain on screen strikes a chord of its own, one more reminder of how far the region's talent has travelled, and how naturally it now belongs in stories of national scale.
Special mention must go to the score, which does a great deal of the emotional work here. The patriotism that runs through the series is felt rather than announced, and much of that is owed to the music. Anurag Saikia, another Assamese artiste, this time working off screen, composes the theme and does his magic quite fantastically.
Operation Safed Sagar is a war drama that respects both its subject and its audience. It recovers a chapter that deserved telling, tells it with craft, and for viewers in this part of the country carries a quiet double pride in the names on both sides of the camera.