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GRAHAN / THE ECLIPSE HARVEST

PITCH DOCKET

INTRODUCTION

As per Biblical references and superstition, during the lunar eclipse, The Blood Moon or “Harvest Moon”
is known to devastate the harvest crop that lies under its glare. As a metaphorical terminology derived
from its effect on the crop, the eclipse is used to symbolize ruin and the crop is used to symbolize the
offspring.

A high-octane crime saga, GRAHAN / THE ECLIPSE HARVEST, is a riveting film about SHIV, the
Narcotics Bureau’s decorated top cop’s son gone wrong on the one hand, and that of JAVED, the
vengeance seeking, forsaken son against his drug lord father, because of his illegitimacy, on the other.

How both sons eclipse their fathers’ haloed glory and inglorious infamy, respectively, as victims of
their own circumstances, and how their sordid lives are paradoxically connected – is a tale told in
the foreground with the underbelly of the narcotics mafia as its backdrop.

STORY OUTLINE

CHAPTER 1: GENESIS / HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Bombay. The early-70’s. Deven Singh Deo, a successful Bollywood producer stuns the nation, by
gunning down his picture-perfect family, leaving his wife and school-going son literally scarred but alive,
with memories that would always haunt them.

Police investigations had later unraveled that Deven Singh Deo owed huge amounts of money to the
underworld, from whom he had borrowed money to finance his films. With no way to repay them,
because of his string of movies that didn’t rake in money from the box-office, he had resorted to
killing his family and committing suicide thereafter.

Bombay. The mid-80’s. After Akanksha Patil, daughter of top politician RAVINDRA PATIL is
exposed, overdosing on a hallucinogenic drug in a rave party, her father’s reputation as a political
personality comes crashing down.

Bombay-NCB. The mid-80’s. PARAS SINGH DEO, a highly decorated cop of the Narcotics Control
Bureau (NCB), comes in with top recommendations. He hits the media headlines because of the
phenomenal sting operation that he carries out on the deadly eunuch drug lord called POWDER BAI.
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Paras Singh Deo was the same school-going child and survivor of the infamous Singh Deo Massacre
that had taken place in the early 70’s.

CHAPTER 2: POWDER BAI / THE MAKING OF A QUEEN

Bombay. Early 70’s. Altaf Hussein—a domestic servant in politician, Ravindra Patil’s house, was caught
indulging in having sex with the politician’s elder daughter, Diksha. Upon getting caught, Altaf was
forcefully castrated and was given to the eunuch community in Kamatipura, while Diksha committed
suicide. After Altaf was pronounced as a certified Hijra, within the eunuch community, he was made to
dance at weddings and birthdays of newborn children along with performing fellatio to, and getting
sodomized by male clients at night under the stupor of drugs, given by Rani Amma – the eunuch queen.

One night while being sodomized by a male client, Altaf realized what he was made to do in a drugged
state. Enraged, he swore revenge on Ravindra Patil and vowed to one day pay him back in the same coin.
That night, Altaf murdered Rani Amma and became the head of the community. He built an army of
eunuchs and took to crime by selling the same drugs that were given to him, thus christening himself as
“Powder Bai”.

Powder Bai became the “Godmother”, not only in her community, but also, in a large part of a certain
class of society, where she helped avenge the wronged in the most maniacal and ruthless manner. Every
lunar eclipse, a celebration took place in the eunuch community, where Powder Bai was adorned as a
Goddess and worshipped.

After Powder Bai is busted by Paras Singh Deo, she finds herself finished, once again, as she goes
underground, hiding from the Narcs. Reduced to becoming a destitute, she manages to survive on scraps.
It is then that she curses Paras – once again, the infamous Hijra Curse, of him having an offspring, who
would come as a poison in its mother’s womb and be the cause of Paras’ death and destruction in his life.

Bombay. The mid-80’s. After the Home Minister, pronounces Paras as Senior Superintendent of Police of
the NCB Task Force, the doctors find complications in the pregnancy of Paras’ wife, AMRITA, after
she’s diagnosed with Septicemia; an infection of the blood where the chances of her survival are declared
as very slim.

Paras does everything to save his wife, while at the same time, facing the wrath of GURUJI, his mother’s
godman and his illiterate followers, who blame their unborn child as “the poison” inside its mother. The
underworld calls Paras’ predicament as “Powder Bai’s Curse” on his family.

Finally, Paras’ prayers are answered. Amrita miraculously survives on his prayers and gives birth to a
son, on the night of a blood moon eclipse; a son who they ironically name Shiv. Like Lord Shiva, who
had consumed the entirety of Halahala-the poison created from the Samudra Manthan, young Shiv was
born after consuming all of his mother’s bodily poison. However, unlike the Lord, whose neck had turned
blue, the poison within young Shiv would have its adverse effects in the years to come, metaphorically.
As Paras and Amrita rejoice with their newborn son, the news of Paras’ return slowly starts its whispered
rumored rounds and gets the attention of the dreaded drug kingpin, ABDULLAH QASIM.
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CHAPTER 3: ABDULLAH QASIM / THE DAWN OF THE DON

Bombay. The 1950’s. Moin-uddin Qasim was one of the Pathans who had migrated to Mumbai from
Peshawar. He opened a gambling den in Byculla, under the pretext of a “social club”, where he found
himself diffusing brawls that took place there. Soon, he became famous for his ability to diffuse
arguments and local gang wars. Within a few years, he was raking in good money because of weekly
arbitrations, on the terrace of his building on Sundays. This earned him his nickname, “Matter Moin”
giving him the respect and support of gang leaders from varied localities. Bombay became the new
playground for Moin-uddin Qasim, his wife and 5 children.

During his struggling days, Moin had saved an old beggar woman, who was being stoned to death, upon
aspersions cast that she was a witch. She had predicted that one of his sons would become one of the most
powerful men across the 7 seas, however she also described him as the apostle of the Devil.

His youngest son, Abdullah became a bane for his father from an early age because he would skin or,
mutate stray cats and hang them on the doors of the kids who would scorn him. Soon, he formed a gang
called "Qasim Toli", capitalizing on his father’s surname and goodwill, who sold cocaine, heroin and
other drugs, extorted, kidnapped, and even killed, to gain notoriety on the streets of Bombay.

It was the media splash created by the killing of a big Bollywood producer that made Abdullah Qasim a
dreaded household name. After this incident, there was no stopping him in his rise to unfathomable
power. Moin-uddin severed all ties with his son and Abdullah rechristened his gang as the “Abdullah
Qasim Toli”.

Bombay. It’s the 80’s. Paras with a team of Narcs, carry out a bust on a local drug lord, called BITTA
KHAN, who was also Abdullah Qasim’s key henchman. Bitta gets apprehended to police custody, where
several men from his unit get killed in the bust. An incendiary police corruption scandal involving top
names comes under the scanner.

CHAPTER 4: SHIV SINGH DEO / THE RISE OF THE PRODIGAL SON

Paras’ own family's moral codes are tested when his 8-year-old son, Shiv, gets abducted by the Narc
mafia, whose kingpin, Abdullah demands an exchange for the release and handover of his apprehended
henchman Bitta Khan against that of his son’s life.

The cop-underworld nexus and its scandal reminds Paras of his father and his connections with the
underworld that had made him murder his family and kill himself, decades ago. His father’s past makes
him subconsciously negate Abdullah’s ransom, to preserve his own pristineness, however, Paras
doesn’t realize that history was repeating itself, by him doing something, just as his father had done
to him, decades ago; kill his son.
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Young Shiv’s last-minute escape from his apprehenders is abetted by a young man called Javed Suleiman
Chisti, who is also Abdullah’s driver. Young Shiv is hidden and housed with Abdullah’s stable of child
beggars, who were used as carriers for the drugs that he transported.

Javed knew that he had taken a life-threatening risk upon himself, when he had saved Shiv, which is why
he let time erode the incident. Two years later, when Javed feels that the whole episode of Shiv’s escape
had faded from Abdullah’s memory, he sets Shiv free in to the darkness of the night, leaving him to find
his way back home.

Shiv watches from outside into the window of his father’s residence. Tears of betrayal roll down his
grubby face, as he sees his father celebrating his latest success in a house party, while he had escaped by a
hairline from the gates of hell, after two years of confinement amidst squalor and fear.

That night Paras finds Shiv huddled in the garbage bin in his backyard. Overjoyed, Paras and Amrita do
their best to resurrect a normal life into their only son, however there was something that was drastically
amiss. Shiv was not the same boy anymore. He becomes a recluse at school and stories of his
delinquency starts to surface, when his acts of violence are unleashed on a gang of school bullies. After
Shiv’s expulsion from school, Paras puts him under a very strict scanner, but Shiv is untameable.

Bombay. Early-90’s. Shiv grows up to be a young man who possesses a violent streak and a death-wish
that attracts the worst kind of people towards him, like moths to a flame. He keeps nefarious company
and invites the wrath of rival gangs that leads to local gang wars. His whims of rage and violence are so
unpredictable that he earns the reputation of being psychologically impaired.

Amrita relents to her mother-in-law’s pleas of sending Shiv to her godman; Guru Ji, where Shiv finds out
the reality of the godman. Guru Ji owned a high-end dance bar, as a hidden business, which was a hub for
various nefarious activities. It is there that Powder Bai resurfaces as the one who runs Guru Ji’s dance bar
and looks after his stable of girls, along with being the catalyst for his human trafficking deals. Within
this world, Shiv goes deep into the cesspool of a very dark abyss.

Shiv finds out that within Guru Ji’s stable of girls, who were mostly junkies, was a girl, who belonged to
a family of repute. She was none other than minister Ravindra Patil’s youngest daughter, Akanksha, who
was caught in a rave party, years ago. She had heavily fallen prey to drugs, and was imprisoned as a
destitute junkie, by Powder Bai, who made her sell herself to dirty lascivious men; just as it was done to
him, after her father’s men castrated him and left him in the eunuch community. Life had come full circle.

Guru Ji compared Powder Bai to Shikhandi from the Mahabharata, who was responsible for Bhishma’s
ruin, as he languished on a bed of arrows -- an obvious comparison to Ravindra Patil, and his fallen
condition of pain and pathos.

Mumbai. Early-90’s. One rainy Mumbai morning, the city tabloids scream that Abdullah Qasim had fled
the country. While the NCB celebrates what they think is their greatest victory of driving out the nemesis
from their land, Paras sits back and envisages the things that were to come. And they were not good
tidings.

Guruji’s dance bar was an offshoot of one of Qasim’s prostitution businesses, where his men would
frequently visit. During Shiv’s mentorship by Guruji, he is exposed to the Godman’s real world of crime
and sin. It is there that he meets Layla, after she gets kidnapped by Powder Bai’s eunuchs. Layla was
Powder Bai’s favorite catch, because she loved her light brown hazel colored eyes. Powder Bai had saved
for the client who would bid the highest amount of money for her. Sayyed Bakr, one of Qasim’s men was
the one. When he visits the dance bar and is given Layla, by Powder Bai, in lieu to his bid, she resists and
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he tries to rape her. It is then that Shiv kills Sayyed Bakr and runs away with Layla. This makes Powder
Bai draw daggers at Shiv and thus become his sworn enemy.

With the news of the murder of Sayyed Bakr at the hands of Shiv, Paras’ worst fears come true. He
arrests Shiv, much to his mother’s agony and pain.

CHAPTER 5: JAVED SULEIMAN CHISTI / SATAN TURNED SAVIOUR

No longer a driver, but a very powerful man now, Javed is the messiah, who bails out Shiv, because he is
Abdullah Qasim’s nemesis, and any man who quaked Abdullah’s world would become his natural ally.
Javed doesn’t recognize Shiv, but Shiv recognizes his savior once again. He reveals his childhood identity
to him, and Javed offers Shiv a job in his oil rigs in Dubai, which is a front for all his illegal operations.
Thus, an alliance is formed. He relocates with Layla to join Javed’s cesspool of sin as his friend,
philosopher and mentor.

Dubai. Early-90’s. Javed hatches a plan to infiltrate Shiv into Abdullah’s gang. Shiv jeopardizes a pre-
planned murder attempt to kill Abdullah outside the casino and saves him. Later, Shiv lies about his
enmity with Javed and proposes to join Abdullah’s gang. A deal is struck, and Shiv becomes a fly on the
wall for all of Abdullah’s operations, passing on all the information to Javed, who sabotages many of
Abdullah’s drug consignments. Certain members of the Qasim gang get insecure with Shiv’s growing
camaraderie with Abdullah. Especially, a man who went by the name RIYAZ KHAN aka Riyaz-Rada,
because of his penchant to start wars.

Bombay. Early-90’s. In one of his sojourns to Mumbai, Riyaz-Rada visits Guru Ji’s dance bar. During an
intoxicated gossip session with Powder Bai, the topic of Abdullah Qasim’s new blue-eyed boy called
Shiv, comes up, much to Riyaz’ chagrin. Powder Bai informs Riyaz that Shiv was none other than the son
of Paras Singh Deo, who had killed Sayyed Bakr and had then joined forces with Javed Suleiman. Riyaz
is shocked with the news because of a very old enmity that he had harbored against Paras Singh Deo.
Riyaz was the youngest brother of Bitta Khan, who was busted by Paras decades ago. A few years later,
Bitta had died in prison, while being tortured by the cops for information. Since then, he had been waiting
for an opportunity, to exact vengeance against Paras Singh Deo. He is quick to pass this information to
Abdullah, who, in turn, plans a very unique mouse trap for Shiv.

CHAPTER 6: CONJUGAL LUST / BLOODLUST

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Bombay. Early-90’s. Even though, Powder Bai had been forced to become a eunuch, after decades of
being treated as a woman, she had started feeling womanly desires that she had refused to accept. This
was something that only Guruji, had recognized, when he had seen her make furtive and coy glances at a
few men, who were clients to his dance bar.

One day, Guruji tells Powder Bai that now that her thirst for revenge against Ravindra Patil was
quenched, it was time that she accepted her womanhood, and the only way to do that was for her to marry
a man that he would choose for her. When Guruji shows her a young and needy man, who was ready to
be her groom, Powder Bai starts dreaming of a married life with the young man, whose name was Ali.

In one of his conversations with Powder Bai, with the purdah in between them, when Ali had mentioned
of an altercation that he had with his landlord, she had presented him with the landlord’s head on a platter.
This made Ali shudder in absolute terror about the woman who was to be his future wife.

Dubai. Early-90’s. Shiv is taken by surprise when he is assigned by Abdullah to kill his nemesis, Paras
Singh Deo as his major elimination mission to avenge his losses.

Mumbai. Early 90’s. As Shiv fails to shoot his father, Riyaz-Rada kills Paras Singh Deo, while he delivers
a speech, with Amrita by his side on a wheelchair, at the Lion’s Club in Bombay.

That night, as Riyaz plans his escape from the country, back to Dubai, Shiv hunts him down and kills him
brutally, in the boat that was to bring him back.

CHAPTER 7: FORSAKEN / HOW THE SPAWN BECAME THE SCOURGE

Dubai. Early 90’s. Pangs of guilt eat at Shiv, as he blames himself for his father’s death. All the grudges
he nursed against his father, no longer loomed in his heart, and for the first time in his life, he felt his
father’s absence. On the brink of self-destruction, on the edge of the rooftop of a skyscraper, inebriated
with drugs, as Shiv is about to end his life, Javed intervenes and saves him, once again. This time, Javed
reveals to Shiv, the secret of his illegitimacy, his mother’s ordeal and his father’s identity; the dreaded
Abdullah Qasim.
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Bombay. The early-70’s. TABREZ was a janitor in the Topaz Dance Bar, where amongst dozens of
dancers was HAMIDA BANO, who fell in love with him when he saved her from the sadistic owner,
who would torture her, while having sex with her. After they married, Tabrez found in Hamida, a
financial crutch and would gamble all her earnings away. Then one day, Tabrez played higher stakes than
usual with a few men of questionable repute and lost what he had borrowed from them, after which he is
returned to his wife nearly dead, with a warning to pay up within a deadline, literally.

Upon the suggestion of another bar dancer, Hamida went to meet a man called Abdullah Qasim for help.
She came back with a stack of money and thenceforth, started entertaining him in his frequent visits to her
house, while Tabrez would lock himself in the toilet. One day, when she found herself pregnant, Hamida
also found Tabrez hanging from the ceiling, dead. Upon this information, Abdullah tried to take out
Hamida’s foetus, by carving her with a knife, leaving her in a bloody mess, when he hears the crowds
coming from the shanty. But, the baby survived when she gave birth to him. Hamida named her bastard
child Javed Suleiman Chisti, and when she held him for the very first time, she felt a strange sensation of
strength and power, as if she had held a gun. Very soon, Javed was out on the streets of Dongri, playing
with the ragamuffins and street urchins, who infested its dark alleys.

Bombay. The early-80’s. When Javed turned 18, Hamida brought him to Abdullah, as her adopted son,
for the employment of his services to him. That day, Hamida left her son employed as his illegitimate
father’s driver, where he was to hatch a plan to assassinate him, when the time was right.

Bombay. Mid-80’s. As Abdullah Qasim’s trusted driver, Javed hatches a plan to assassinate him, however
he fails in his first attempt. By the time Abdullah figured out who was involved in the conspiracy, Javed
made his way out from Abdullah’s employment, and became his sworn enemy. That was when they had
parted ways.

Dubai. Early 90’s. Javed was the son of Abdullah Qasim, who had forsaken him because of his
illegitimacy. Javed emotionally reveals to Shiv that his reason for helping him, time and again, was
because he had identified with Shiv’s angst against his father, for being his forsaken son too.

CHAPTER 8: BLOOD MOON / THE FINAL PURGE

Dubai. Early-90’s. Javed has an unexpected visitor. It is Ravindra Patil. No longer a powerful political
personality, he approaches Javed, as a broken man, to tell him that the police had unearthed his youngest
daughter, Akanksha’s dead body. Found in the gutters, he could hardly recognize her after all the years of
drug abuse and torture that she was made to go through. Ravindra Patil had come to avenge his daughter’s
death with a supari to kill Powder Bai, however Javed declines the offer, as he had more pressing matters
to deal with. Layla overhears this.

A plan is hatched. Years of service at close quarters, had taught Javed well. Abdullah’s wife Madeeha
climbs the stony steps of the mosque to seek the blessings of Baba Jalal-uddin for Altamash, their 6-year-
old physically and mentally challenged son. Javed nods his head to a man who stands waiting at the
mosque entrance to abduct the child.
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When Shiv describes every instruction that Abdullah was to carry out, if he ever wanted to see his son
alive again, the hostage had become the abductor, to the very abductor who had once held him hostage.
The moon had made its journey around the earth to eclipse the sun once again.

That night, Shiv hijacks Abdullah Qasim from his Al-Habibi casino, right from under his men’s noses
into the trunk of his sedan, in the parking lot, after which a massive chase ensues. As he loses his
perpetrators at his tail, across cargo crates and huge containers, on the edge of the road by the water line
of the dockyard, Qasim’s lieutenant makes the obvious call to attack the oil rig that belongs to Javed
Suleiman Chisti, the obvious suspect.

As Altamash sits playing in the corner, in a closed chamber in Javed’s oil rig, Javed looks on at his step
brother, as his thoughts dwell on how Allah played with mere mortals the game of love and legitimacy,
while extracting his pound of flesh through impairment and normalcy. His henchman informs him that the
Qasim gang were on their way to the oil rigs.

Mumbai. Early 90’s. As Powder Bai is adorned for her wedding by the other eunuchs, a prostitute makes
her way into her dressing room. The split second of Powder Bai’s eyes meeting the eyes of the prostitute,
in the reflection of the mirror, in her bridal avatar, makes her realize that her time had come. The eyes
were that of Layla’s, who had come in the guise of a prostitute. Layla tells her that she is pregnant and
that her to-be-child needed a hijra’s blessings, before shooting her in the forehead. Pandemonium ensues
as Layla escapes. A tear rolls down Powder Bai’s eye as she lies dead, with the unrequited wish of being
a newly wedded wife.

Dubai. Early 90’s. A massive shootout ensues in the oil rigs with the Qasim gang and the Suleiman gang
killing each other. Javed is led out quietly from a secret passage by his trusted lieutenant into a boat
where he was heads out for the city with Altamash.

Shiv drives at full speed in the empty Dubai Desert Road as the night was breaking into dawn, with the
speeding wheels of his sedan blowing out sand from its sides. Abdullah had become quiet from inside the
trunk and Shiv hoped that he had not been killed by the bullets that were fired at the car during the chase.
Javed is on his way to the same place as planned. His SUV sped across the Desert Road from the opposite
side towards Shiv. Altamash slept in the back seat of the SUV.

Both the cars swerve into the desert from different points and meet in the middle of the desert at the
decided meeting point, where both men came out of their cars and look at each other. They had pulled it
off.

The night is nearly breaking into dawn and the trunk is flung open with guns pointed at it by both the
men. Abdullah is in a bloody mess but he is alive. His eyes strain and finally see Javed and Shiv.
Altamash sits in the SUV, watching his father being dragged out and forced to kneel in front of the rising
sun, with his head lopsided.

Javed stands in front of Abdullah, blocking his vision of the rising sun and reveals his identity.
Abdullah’s shocked expression freezes as Javed and Shiv shoot him together, making him fall from his
kneeling position, face into the sand. The body of Abdullah Qasim is put back in the car and is then
torched. Altamash just sits in the car staring at the whole scene with a skewed squint in his eyes and his
mouth twitching.

Amrita walks along with a pregnant Layla pushing a luggage trolley in the airport. She had come to bring
Amrita back home to her son and her unborn baby. Amrita never had a daughter and she felt that this girl
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would be the perfect daughter that she never had. Amrita also secretly believed that her husband would be
born again into the family.

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