EXCLUSIVE! Director Shiv Rawail on Netflix’s The Railway Men: ‘Telling the story in a series format was empowering’

The Railway Men shows the untold part of the Bhopal gas tragedy which we weren’t aware of and hence it is a must watch. The writing of the show was crisp and the backstories were beautifully weaved in. Many may question as to why we need to see this Bhopal tragedy again and how it is relevant in today’s time.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost’s Lachmi Deb Roy, debut director, Shiv Rawail and writer of the mini-series, The Railway Men talks on what made them make it into a series and not a feature film. Shiv spoke about the method they adopted and the research that went behind it. And by adopting the series format way, they didn’t have to leave anything that was relevant to this topic and all the characters in the series have been retained and not left out.

 Edited excerpts from the interview:

Shiv: What was the process that you adopted to make The Railway Men look so believable?

The two things that we did was that we were very clear with our intensions. We wanted to make it believable. And that meant working with the best crew, being produced by YRF what we needed to do to bring this project to the table and to the screen. So, they backed us with the best talent, crew and the teams that we wanted.

Secondly, we did a lot of research going into the smallest details of every nut and bolt of the factory to scouting locations, going to the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal and making a map of how things happened where did people go in from and escape from. We did extensive trips to Bhopal to figure this out. We also hired teams on-ground to do research for us and we had to look at every old photograph. I think I have seen every archival video footage available of the Bhopal gas leak to see how close we can get to that.

We went into every small detail of putting up of that movie poster on the railway station. We have put in a lot of hard work and I am glad it’s reflecting on the product.

Shiv: Was it a conscious decision to make The Railway Men into a series format and not a film format?

At the very initial stage we were considering it to be a feature film and it was after a discussion with Ayush (writer of The Railway Men) and Aditya Chopra, we realised that if we go the feature film format, then we will have to lose a lot of things that we loved from the script. And we felt that there were some aspects of the story which we had to keep. That’s when YRF was trying to step into the world of OTT and that’s when they said that why don’t you consider making it into a mini-series. That struck a chord between Ayush and me.

Now I feel the fact that we got to tell it as a series was very empowering. By going the series format way, we didn’t have to leave anything that was relevant to this topic and all the characters in the series have been retained and not left out.

 Ayush: With audience evolving, The Railway Men shows that it is more of a human calamity, than a natural one. How relevant is the story in today’s world?

I think we have all lived through COVID and it was very relevant in our life. My father is a doctor in a government hospital and my sister was also working in a government hospital back then. They would don their uniforms, their masks, surgical suits and go into COVID wards not with a motive that today we have to go and save lives. It’s a very understated kind of heroism. Instead, they used to say I am going for my duty, if I don’t do it who else will do. So, if that kind of understated heroism is relevant in COVID, it is relevant with The Railway Men too. They are not going to their workplace to become heroes, but to do their jobs. And if that particular night it meant risking their lives to save others, then so be it. I just hope that relevance is still there.

Ayush: How did you keep the script tight, by going back and forth and yet not losing focus, how did you do it?

I don’t think it was difficult once we had focused on the comradery and the brotherhood among the railway men, cutting away from one railway men to another or to a potential railway man, it felt organic.

Shiv: You also had a certain scene which showed the atrocities towards the Sikh community? What was the thought behind it?

Both the Bhopal Gas leak and the anti-Sikh riots happened more or less together with a couple of weeks apart. During the research process we realised that the small outbreaks were still happening. But our intension of the chapter of the Gorakhpur Express was that there was a train coming to Bhopal and we wanted to build a connection between the Muslim mother and her children with a Sikh mother and her son along with the guard of the train who is also a railway man.