The Terror Women Feel in Delhi: The Makers of 'Khauf' Break Down the Show

Written and created by Smita Singh, lensed and directed by Pankaj Kumar, Khauf streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is a supernatural horror-thriller, though this genre label might be misleading. The horror comes not from the mystical, but from the mundane — there is a ghost, sure, and there is possession, haunting, and jump scares, too, but the most horrifying scenes of the show are women walking down dark alleys in Delhi, a city whose myth runs as deep as its blood-clot. The supernatural is, if anything, a feeble metaphor compared to the city. 

“I wanted to touch upon the terror that women feel in this pretty looking city,” Kumar tells The Hollywood Reporter India — a dichotomy that is both visual and narrative, where incidental warmth exists alongside a metallic aloofness. Starring Monika Panwar as Madhu, a young woman who moves from Gwalior to Delhi, traumatised by rape, but hopeful about re-writing this violence with a life of freedom in the big city, she encounters another matrix of despair that the city awaits — a ghost that inhabits the room she rents out at a girls' hostel. 

In a conversation with Singh and Kapur, edited for length and clarity, they break down the show, the choices, and that dense, chaotic climax. 

A still from 'Khauf'

Smita, when did you start thinking about this show? At what point did Pankaj come in? 

Smita: When I was at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), around in 2012-13, I had written about this working women’s hostel in Delhi based on a hostel I lived in, in the late 90s. I was really young, and had seen a bunch of these women come in from all over the country, entering the gig economy, trying to make something — some stayed, some went back.

Around the time of writing Sacred Games (2018), I knew that this story needs to be told through the lens of horror. It took me 18 months to write it, and was greenlit for production. 

Pankaj had shot Raat Akeli Hai (2020), which I had written. The director Honey Trehan used to send me stills. My God, it was like someone got into my head and took a picture. I desperately wanted him as the cinematographer. But the way he read the script and wrote back, it was a director’s response. So I got both things in one go. Talking to him was like talking to someone who could have been sitting beside me when I was writing this script. 

Pankaj, this is your debut as a director. What made you take that leap between lensing a film to now sculpting it? 

Pankaj: Even at FTII, I was more interested in attending direction classes than cinematography classes. I actually skipped all my cinematography classes — those were so boring. 

I was very familiar with Smita’s writing because of Raat Akeli Hai. Who writes like this? So intense, so riveting. When she sent me the script of Khauf, I stayed up all night and read the whole thing in one go. The way she had developed the characters, framing the city itself as the genesis of fear — that is something very few writers are able to pull off. I decided I am not only going to shoot it, I want to direct this thing. So that’s what I conveyed to Smita, and, fortunately, I was on board. 

A still from 'Khauf'

Smita, why was horror inevitable in trying to tell this story of women in Delhi? And how do you push your original idea through the streaming engine without it being compromised? 

Smita: When I was living in this hostel I was reading a lot of Stephen King, so in my head that space fused fictionally with that. Also, as women, you carry this low grade fear constantly in the urban chaos, especially in Delhi.

How can you tell this story without fear then? This fear never leaves you, and becomes a part of you. You call women hysterical and paranoid, but it is our lived experience that makes us this way. We are like Pavlov’s bitches. Even if there might be something good with that ring of the bell, the city conditions you to be a terribly doubtful and gaslit person.

Now, everything that I am saying to you right now would be very difficult to pitch. You start writing, and then there is a constant negotiation at every single level. A lot of it is protecting your story fiercely, which makes you a fierce person. 

Though, nobody told me to put this element or put that element in. The negotiations were around budget and marketing — which is based on what gets more viewers, casting, etc. 

Pankaj, as a first time director of a genre show, there are cheap thrills that are expected, but there is also this elevated tone throughout. Is it a balancing act or a sense of going guns blazing? 

Pankaj: The balancing act of jump scares versus a deep narrative was already there in the script. I did not bother about any of the external challenges. 

The first thing for me was to understand the fear and the terror that Smita had so well depicted. We actually went to the hostel and the location which had inspired Smita to write her story. She showed me the back alley that connects the hostel to the bus stop. There was no supernatural fear over there. The fear was from the men lurking in the bushes who could jump on women anytime. The back alley we shot in is exactly the one Smita based her story on.

A still from 'Khauf'

Violence against women has almost become a genre, with the rape revenge formula. As writers and directors, how do you go about telling stories of violence without fetishising or patronising it? 

Smita: How does a person recall trauma? There is an erasure of personality that happens — you lose your personality, you lose memory, you lose a lot of those things. Women recalling their trauma or dealing with it is very difficult to imagine. It is merged into their everyday, normal, regular life. They don’t sit and think about it.

But when something triggers, it takes over. When Madhu recalls that moment in therapy, she is eating her words. There is this gap when she says “Phir maine apne kadpe dhonde aur hum ghar chale gaye” (Then I found my clothes and we went home) That “kapde dhoonde” was always something I wondered about. How would they dress themselves and go from there? 

Pankaj, what about the scene where she is narrating this. Totally silent, tight close-up, no score prodding us. 

Pankaj: That scene where Madhu is talking to Dr. Shohini about her past was already such a powerful scene, all I had to do was keep it very simple, let Monica perform it, with no ornamentation. The impact of the words, I did not want to diminish in any way. I kept the camera purposefully very close to her face so that you are able to read her mind, through her eyes, through her micro expressions. That is all that scene needed. 

What about the scene that you kept for the very end — of rape. In a country like India where rape is a porn category, how do you think about lensing it? 

Pankaj: Smita and I were very sure that we are not going to provide the gaze of voyeurism to this incident, but also not to dilute the effect of the incident. The only time you see the rape is from Madhu’s own perspective, in her dream. We kept the camera far away, framed in a silhouette with all the colored lighting of the college function going on behind. We made sure that the rape is visible from Madhu’s perspective.

Smita: That is why there was a “witness Madhu” there. You plant her there and then you are with her throughout.

Pankaj: The audience is now forced to see it from her perspective. There is no other perspective. So there is no way it is going to be titillating to anybody. 

One of the most depressing conclusions of this show is that the only way a woman in Delhi can feel and be stronger, is by being possessed by a man. When Madhu gets possessed, that is when she starts kicking the creepy guy’s crotch on the bus, hitting another creep on the head with a brick. 

Smita: It is male aggression that is inside her. You come into the city, you are a young woman, you are completely isolated, and you are being poisoned by the city, right? 

So it is not like she is becoming stronger — though this is what she thinks. When we take on the wars of men, we think that we are integrating. We are not really integrating. We are allowing their toxicity to take over us. A little bit of your oppressor comes from within you.

That is why I think to become like men is a very stupid and modest aim. The aim is to bring down their system. 

A still from 'Khauf'

So do we not celebrate those scenes when she finally hits back against male violence? No “catharsis”?

Smita: It should have come without the poison. I have hit people in buses. The trauma of living in that city, of constantly being erased is what brings out this animal in you — this aggressive male thing. But once touched by this venom, there’s no hope. 

Pankaj: I never saw the violent actions of Madhu as cathartic actions because there is no catharsis. It was a very clever misdirection that Smita incorporates in many of the scenes. When Madhu realizes that, she completely comes out of it in a supernatural way. She is flung from the bed she is tied to, taking this toxicity completely out of her in the final metaphoric release of this entity from her body.

That last episode is both chaotic and dense. The characters are shifting radically, and information is being given rapidly. How do you balance this?

Smita: The idea was to take Madhu through the paces — coming from a deeply wounded psyche, this entity is hollowing her out, making her submit by making her see the place she was the most humiliated, the most naked in. 

But when you make her face the most humiliating thing, she realises that is where her strength is, and pushes him off. The wounds that we face are the things that will make us survive the city — that was my idea behind this.

The violence this entity can give me is so seductive. But truly, what gives you everything back is the love that she has with Arun (Abhishek Chauhan). Love is the final answer, with Madhu in her dreams seeing herself over there, making pleasurable love.