Here’s What Author Vikram Chandra Thinks of Netflix’s Sacred Games

Chandra turns a year older on 23 July.

Vikram Chandra is one of the most respected of contemporary Indian authors. And these days, his name has gone beyond the ken of book lovers, thanks to Netflix’s adaptation of Sacred Games, starring Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte. Chandra’s eponymous novel, the definitive Mumbai book if there is one, lends itself to a complex racy thriller as well.

As Chandra turns 57 on 23 July, here’s a peek into his thoughts about the screen adaption of Sacred Games across interviews.

(Sacred Games on screen is) more of a translation. I think books have their own life within a reader’s mind that nothing else can match; there’s a certain intimacy there. And so when you put it into any other medium, it’s a new creation, or transcreation maybe is a better word. It exists at an angle to the book, but it also exists in its own right.  

Vikram Chandra, Hindustan Times

Netflix have been amazing. One of the things they’ve done that I’m very happy and proud of, that only Netflix could make possible, is that the series is multi-lingual. People in the series talk the way Indians talk. Two people will talk in English, one of them goes home to his mother and there’ll be an entire scene in Punjabi or Marathi. We haven’t even done that on Indian television yet.... I’m not saying this just because it’s my thing, but all of the actors have done just amazing jobs. Not just the leads, but the other characters come across as fully fleshed-out, living, breathing individuals. I’ve lived with this book for a long time and I know what’s going to happen and they still made me cry a couple of times.  

As told to Scroll

Unlike mainstream American channels where the absence of American characters makes everyone nervous, Netflix is unique and brilliant in its notion of global indies. The idea is they take local stories and use local crews to make them for local audiences and then broadcast those to a global audience. They didn’t mind at all that we didn’t have a CIA agent at the front of this series.

As told to Hindustan Times