In the upcoming Netflix show Kohrra, a non-resident Indian man is murdered in a field in Punjab days before his wedding. The investigation by a veteran police officer and his colleague encircles the victim’s family members and their acquaintances. The cops are also putting out domestic fires – while the older man has a disagreement with his daughter, the younger man is in a complicated relationship with his brother and sister-law.
Kohrra stars Suvinder Vicky, Barun Sobti, Manish Chaudhari, Harleen Sethi, Varun Badola and Rachel Shelley in key roles. Directed by Randeep Jha (Halahal, Trial by Fire), the series has been created by Sudip Sharma, Gunjit Chopra and Diggi Sisodia. Chopra and Sisodia have written the six episodes, which will be premiered on July 15.
Sharma’s previous writing credits such explorations of dystopia as Udta Punjab, NH10, Sonchiriya and Pataal Lok. “With my earlier work, I was looking at a macro perspective, larger societal issues, whereas with this one, we wanted to drill into [the themes],” Sharma told Scroll during an interview.
While Kohrra isn’t as dark as Sharma’s previous works, it does go into some unsavoury places. Among its “guiding lights”, according to Sharma, is the sentiment contained in Charles Bukowski’s poetry collection Love is a Dog from Hell. Attachment makes the people in Kohrra behave in questionable ways, leading to a fraught interpersonal dynamic and resolutions that appear to be compromises.
“In the disguise of a procedural drama, we have been able to explore relationships with some amount of depth,” Sharma said. “Even in my previous works, there is the attempt to understand what is happening around us at any given point of time. It comes from this curiosity and also this exhaustion, because you look at the world a certain way and it doesn’t go that way. With Kohrra, it was an attempt to understand why families behave how they behave, how something looks approachable from the distance, but you don’t have the choice or objectivity when you are in it.”
Randeep Jha added, “Each character is in his or her own truth. As the story progresses, they move towards acceptance. Why is it so difficult to accept?”
When Gunjit Chopra and Diggi Sisodia pitched the concept to Sharma, he leapt at the “opportunity it provided to explore relationships in this very authentic milieu in Punjab”. Sharma did have his reservations – here was a drama that went over ground he has previously covered, including the drug trade (explored in Udta Punjab) and a police procedural (Pataal Lok).
“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it – I was coming off a procedural [Pataal Lok] and I was going to get back into its second season,” Sharma said. “I didn’t want to do another cop drama. But I think we have managed to create something very distinct. It’s not a regular cop drama in that sense [but a] relationship drama which happens to have murder as the backdrop. At that point, I was fully invested.”
Sharma hadn’t met Jha before Kohrra, but had watched and admired Jha’s film Halahal, starring Barun Sobti. “I hadn’t seen any of Barun’s work, I knew of him as a TV heart-throb, but his work was great in Halahal,” Sharma said. “Randeep is very good with actors, and we managed to get some very good actors on board. The actors brought in their own take and personality, which enhanced the writing.”
Suvinder Vicky, whose credits include Ivan Ayr’s Milestone and Balwinder Singh Janjua’s Netflix series CAT, had already been cast in Kohrra before Jha joined the production. Sobti entered the scene later.
“We wanted authentic faces and performances,” Jha said. “In Halahal, while Barun didn’t look the part, his performance was amazing. I tested if he knew Punjabi, and he did.”
The show’s cinematographer Saurabh Monga uses long takes for several sequences – a stylistic choice that flowed from the material, Jha said.
“We weren’t taking long takes for the sake of it – we wanted something different but there needed to be a reason, a motivation behind it,” Jha added. “The camera changes its rhythm with different tracks. As you get to know the characters better, the camera goes closer. Some of the characters remain strangers for a while, but then it gets subjective.”
