After the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, Russia’s president decided to visit India in 1993. This sparked real concern among the Intelligence Bureau and Wing officers as there were rumors of a plot to assassinate the president during his stay in New Delhi. Government officials suspected a deaf and mute worker from a Berlin café named Ashok Kumar as they found a German-made gun in his possession and thought he might be involved with the KGB, or ISI, or maybe even the CIA, and thought he may have a possible connection to the assassination plot. Therefore, the government took the help of Pushkin Verma, a government teacher at a local school for the deaf and mute to get to the bottom of this by interviewing Ashok to figure out whether he was truly involved in this dangerous scheme or if he was being framed. The big question remains: Is Ashok really a spy? What does Pushkin discover in his conversation with Ashok? Let’s find out from this explainer of Berlin, directed by Atul Sabharwal, now streaming on Zee5.
Spoilers Ahead
What was Ashok’s job in Berlin?
Pushkin Verma was a common man much like you and I, who taught at a school for the deaf and mute and therefore naturally had no idea why the Intelligence Bureau suddenly took him in to work for them. He had been put on paid leave without his knowledge, and when he met Justice Bureau Chief Jagdish Sondhi, Case Officer Satpal Dhingra, and his assistant Ram Narayan, it finally became clear that they wanted him to interrogate their deaf and mute suspect, Ashok Kumar, who had been accused of being a spy. Pushkin realized that the only reason they picked him was because he was an expert in connecting with the deaf community. When Pushkin met Ashok, he didn’t treat him like a criminal or a spy but approached him with kindness to get to know about his story. And what he figured out was that Ashok didn’t know much about his early life, as he had spent most of his time in an orphanage. Ashok was passionate about football, but life had never given him the opportunity to follow his dreams. Ashok has always felt that being deaf and mute had always defined him in society’s eyes, and because of that people ignored his real talents always. Ashok had landed a job at a place called Berlin Café, where only deaf and mute people were hired. The café was surrounded by government offices—RAW, the Intelligence Bureau, and foreign embassies and high-level officials would come to mingle, have tea, and, more often than not, exchange sensitive information there. The café’s owners thought hiring deaf and mute staff was perfect since they wouldn’t overhear these conversations. Ashok had quietly worked there, and sometimes pretended to be a waiter or other times posed as an officer to fill empty chairs and prevent conversations from being overheard.
What was the reality of this investigation?
Pushkin just started to build trust with Ashok and get deeper into his story. But on his way home after the interrogation, Pushkin was kidnapped by RAW officer Mr. JV Raman. Raman’s colleagues, Wing officers Mr. Mehta and Mr. Mahajan, were being held by the Intelligence Bureau, and Raman needed Pushkin to clear their names by interrogating Ashok, and if Pushkin didn’t cooperate, both his and his family’s lives would be at risk. Therefore, the innocent teacher who was dragged into this mess soon realized that Ashok wasn’t the real target. It turned out that, after the Cold War, the information trading networks had collapsed, but Mehta and Mahajan had failed to keep up with this. Sondhi, however, had inside information from the KGB about the Russian president’s visit and tour plan in India. A woman who worked for ISI had seduced Sondhi and managed to steal this sensitive information, and planned the assassination. Mehta and Mahajan found out about the plot and pressured her for months to try to keep the truth from leaking. The real goal wasn’t to catch Ashok but to cover up their own mistakes and protect their reputations. Because basically, the problem was, whether the president’s assassination was successful or unsuccessful, that wouldn’t matter. What would matter is that the bureau and wing’s reputation would be jeopardized, as these officers would get caught in this mess. Pushkin was naturally shocked, after all, he was a common man who believed in the system, but now he had begun to see the truth: The government he thought was protecting people was, in fact, using Ashok as a scapegoat to hide their own failures. He realized he couldn’t let an innocent man like Ashok be destroyed by these powerful people.
Why did Ashok want to help the woman?
Ashok had always felt deeply lonely, but his loneliness was different to most. He didn’t have anyone close, couldn’t share his feelings, and couldn’t understand or listen to others. The only thing he could truly read were people’s eyes and how they behaved around Ashok. That’s why, while working at the café, he noticed how Mr. Mahajan and Mr. Mehta would harass the ISI spy woman during their interrogations and Ashok could see the loneliness in her eyes and how she would sometimes look at him with eyes that he thought were asking for help. He was someone who observed everything closely, and through this, he learned where the woman lived and even about Mr. Mahajan’s home. Ashok secretly made a copy of Mahajan’s keys as he knew that Mahajan had something the woman was being threatened with, and therefore, he wanted to retrieve it to help her. One day Ashok managed to sneak into Mahajan’s home and opened his locker, and he found what he was looking for—compromising photos of Sondhi with the woman, details about the assassination plot, and a German gun—the same one that was later found in Ashok’s possession. Just as Ashok discovered the evidence, Mahajan walked in with Intelligence Bureau officers who tried to take those very photos from his house to protect Sondhi. When Ashok saw this he came out with the gun. In the chaos, he shot one officer, and another officer was killed by Mahajan. Ashok then took Mahajan at gunpoint to the woman’s house to return the photos to protect her. Ashok believed that if he gave her the pictures, she could escape this mess. However, things didn’t go as planned. Mehta followed their trail, and a chaotic gunfight erupted where, in the end, all three—Mehta, Mahajan, and Ashok—were caught by the Bureau. The woman, however, managed to escape for the time being.
What happened to Ashok?
By this point, Pushkin had figured out how the government officials played their dirty games by using an innocent man like Ashok as a scapegoat to cover up their own mistakes. All Pushkin wanted was enough proof to point the blame at Sondhi, who was truly behind the mess. He even managed to sneak into Sondhi’s office to gather information, only to discover that Ram Narayan, Sondhi’s assistant, was also a Bureau officer and an informant for the Wing, and Ram, too, was trying to save Mr. Mehta and Mr. Mahajan from the mess the Bureau, especially Sondhi had created. But Sondhi wasn’t stupid, as he realized Pushkin knew about his involvement in this mess more than he should. The Bureau and RAW officers had set aside their differences and managed to catch the ISI spy woman. They killed her, stabbed her in the back, made it look like they had lost track of her, and created fake reports that she had escaped. And then Sondhi planted the dead body of the ISI woman in Pushkin’s house to scare him into backing off. When that didn’t work, Sondhi took it further by showing Ashok photos of the woman’s dead body. He tried to manipulate him by revealing that her body had been found in Pushkin’s house and that the murder weapon, a knife, had Pushkin’s fingerprints on it, which made it look like Pushkin had killed her. Sondhi basically tried to frame Pushkin for the woman’s murder. She made it clear this could only be avoided under one condition: Ashok had to confess that he had been an ISI spy all along. Sondhi wanted Ashok to claim that he and the woman were part of the assassination plot and had planned her escape after Ashok’s arrest. Ashok had never really had anyone in his life, no one had ever treated him like a human being—until Pushkin came along, who showed him kindness and respect and did not see him as a spy or a suspect, but as a normal human being. For the first time, Ashok felt like someone truly cared for him. So, in order to protect Pushkin, Ashok agreed to give the fake confession. On the final day of the interrogation, Ashok confessed to being a Pakistani spy. Pushkin knew it was a lie, he could see how Sondhi and the other powerful officials had manipulated Ashok, but he had no way to prove it. Even though Pushkin knew the truth he was forced to remain silent just like Ashok.
And just like that, at the end of the movie Berlin, we also see the end of the Berlin Café. What was once a gathering spot for government officials had become an information trading hub, hence, the café had to go. Pushkin returned to his old life as a teacher for the deaf and mute, but we all know that going back to a “normal” life wouldn’t be easy for him. He wasn’t the naive, innocent man he once was as he had seen and learned more than he should have. He saw how the news bulletins were filled with Ashok’s name, the so-called “Pakistani spy,” had another label attached to his name—“deaf and mute.” But instead of these being seen as weaknesses, they made him someone even more dangerous in the eyes of the authorities as people believed despite his weaknesses Ashok had somehow managed to threaten both the Russian and Indian governments. But Pushkin knew better, still, he had to keep all this knowledge to himself. He was just a common man after all, and he couldn’t afford to challenge people in power as he had learned one lesson: standing up against powerful officials could destroy him, just like it did Ashok, and Pushkin knew he couldn’t risk losing his family by taking on a fight he couldn’t win.
