DHURANDHAR
Three recovered files on the operational career of one Ajit Sanyal — fictional senior officer of the Research and Analysis Wing, whose career has run, for reasons too convoluted to explain, in unsettling parallel to that of India's actual National Security Adviser.
Three files, in chronological order.
Dhurandhar 1
Dhurandhar 2
Ajit Sanyal's Swansong
On the recovered nature of these files
The Dhurandhar trilogy is not strictly journalism. It is what the Review classifies internally as a "correspondence-thriller" — a hybrid form in which the analytical content is real but the reporting frame is fictional. The protagonist Ajit Sanyal is a fictional rendering of a real archetype, drawn loosely from the institutional sensibility of officers who have spent careers running operations that never make the morning paper.
The reader will recognise certain real-world events behind each file. The April 26 meeting between India's NSA and the President of the UAE is real. What was discussed in that meeting is, by the nature of such meetings, not in the public record. Creed offers his guesses. Three of them, taken together, are probably correct. Determining which three is left as an exercise to the reader — and to several intelligence agencies whose budgets ostensibly fund this kind of work.
Hamza, codename
Returning readers will recognise the codename Hamza, who appears in passing in Dhurandhar 1 and Dhurandhar 2 and who, in Dhurandhar 3, takes the seat to Sanyal's right as the chosen successor. Some lineages are not advertised. Some lineages do not need to be.
The IPL puzzle
One footnote for the careful reader. In Sanyal's closing memorandum, he leaves Hamza a small parting amusement: the initials of the first names of three trusted associates, read in order, spell the abbreviation of an IPL franchise. (It is not the obvious one.) Solutions, suspicions, and outright accusations may be sent to the address below.
"Twelve theories. Three are probably correct. The reader is invited to choose which three. Sanyal himself, when asked, would not say. He is on his swansong. Discretion is the only farewell speech a man like him is permitted."