Can we ask questions on Kohrra?

Isn’t it fun taking the fog off a show that equally makes us see Punjab so clearly

Facing their backs to the audience, pissing from the front, Cop#1 Balbir tells Cop#2 Garundi, in the Netflix series, Kohrra: “You know the problem with Punjab? We don’t confront the truth.”

This would hold for Punjab’s portrayal in mainstream entertainment as well. What’s it about the state, lately, however, that onscreen, it evokes such uncomfortably unflinching grimness? Grahan (Disney+Hotstar), Tabbar (Sony LIV), CAT (Netflix)…

In contrast to the land of sarson, giddha, gedi, bhangra, whiskey, with loud uncles, aunties, that Punjabi-nostalgist migrants—quite possibly, the majority among heroes plus producers in Hindi cinema—had celebrated, forever? 

Same with Kohrra (on Netflix)—and the question needn’t be posted on Quora! It’s simply truth-telling, what else—for a society so hardened, through a history of violence, down to the unthinkable mercilessness of Partition (1947), all the way, more recently, to separatist terrorism, up until 1995.

The people in Kohrra must, firstly, must not be confused with Punjabis/Haryanvis of the usual Delhi underbelly, that’s been so widely chronicled, that it’s become a cliché—no one’s captured it better than director Dibakar Banerjee (Lust Stories, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Khosla Ka Ghosla).

Kohrra, with such top-class production and sound design—directed by Randeep Jha (co-director, Trial By Fire), Gunjit Chopra, Diggi Sisodia for creators, and Sudip Sharma (showrunner: Paatal Lok) credited as co-creator—is, technically, a murder mystery.

In the vein of, say, True Detective, Mare of Easttown (HBO), or moody plus pacy, American small-town thrillers, like Ozark (Netflix), if you may. Those, in a sense, have paved the way. 

On the script, though, there are probably more touches and ‘chitta’ (heroin) from Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab (2016), or Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan (2018; DJ hero’s girlfriend, getting married to firang-returned). 

Kohrra is set in Jagrana. I’m guessing it’s a fictional town. There is a real Jagraon, in Ludiana district, where Lala Lajpat Rai was from. Either case, it’s usually hard to tell one North Indian boondocks from another, usually. 

And the genre itself simply frames a wider story. The ploy is to draw you deeper into a world, to actually see it beyond the generic lives of others. If it was simply about the murder of a BBCD (British-born Confused Desi), and his missing, Brit friend, for a whodunnit, as it were—Kohrra would be a board game. 

Which, only the uniquely gifted, can be great at writing so charmingly, that you needn’t bother with any layering at all. It’s not for nothing that we still worship Agatha (Christie) or Arthur (Conan Doyle)—that’s what they pulled off, effortlessly, repeatedly. 

Often, good Indian scripts, though, regardless of genre, you might notice, have this sharp tendency to slip in a line or two, that precisely define its larger point/purpose. It doesn’t occur for a conflict in a scene. Neither does it necessarily detail a strong moral. It’s just there. 

For me, as an audience, in Kohrra, it’s that bit when policeman Balbir says, “Pyaar badi g***du cheez hai (love is a bitch).” And, much later, his colleague Garundi goes (have screenshotted subtitles): “Funny how we don’t f***ing understand our own families our whole lives!” 

Pick those two passwords—take the other, when one doesn’t work—and you will unlock all that’s going on, throughout Kohrra. 

It’s foremost about poor parenting, isn’t it? I reckon, that is the world’s problem number one—the rest, from fanaticism to fratricide, cheats to gang-lords, are symptoms. Pretty sure, it starts with the father, first.

Especially, in societies so impenetrably patriarchal, that even the social/economic class can’t get in the way. Lowly cop Balbir, with his own daughter, for instance, is hardly different from the rich, NRI dad (an unrecognisable Manish Chaudhari), pounding Punjabi ‘martial race’ theory on his son (found dead). 

Violence will eventually erupt, as a means of expression, in worlds so repressed—so will sex, in its more bizarre forms? Evidently. 

Wherein, cop Gurundi is sleeping with his brother’s wife; the married woman, with child, is risking all for an old college flame; over-worked truckers are into transexuals (reportedly, a sub-culture)…. 

I slow-watched Kohrra, over three days. It’s the opposite of binge-watching. Because you don’t want it to end. And that is what quality content (whether food, or film) is: a thing to savour. 

Also, Kohrra is a mini-series that, I pray to God, all shows become. To answer my prayer, God says, no—OTT will be the new TV, with everything going on for never-ending seasons/episodes, once a captive audience has been tapped!

That said, we could watch Balbir and Gurundi for longer! In 2022, on the jury of the Hitlist OTT Awards, it took us forever—incessantly matching images, stills on Google—to even get the name of “the other, superb Sardar guy” from CAT, we wished to nominate for ‘best supporting actor’. 

That’s Suvinder Vicky—Balbir, from Kohrra. Won’t be hard to recall him anymore. Likewise, we’d nominated Barun Sobti (Garundi), for the same award/category, in 2021, for Asur (Voot). He wasn’t frontrunner. 

Bagged all public votes online. He’s that huge on soaps/network TV.

Between these two, we probably have the finest, desi buddy-cops, no? Barring Hathiram Chaudhary (Jaydeep Alhawat) and Imran Ansari (Ishwak Singh), from Paatal Lok (Prime Video), of course.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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