With their new offering Guns & Gulaabs, the duo of Raj and DK ride their special brand of levity
Known for their humorous take, Raj and DK say that even on sets, they break the tension or a thwart a crisis with humour. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar
When you think of Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK—the screenwriter, director and producer duo collectively known as Raj & DK—and their work, you think gritty but funny; raw but aesthetic; simple but also worldly-wise. The duo has always built varied worlds—zombies in Goa (Go Goa Gone), the bland superficial life of a secret NIA agent (The Family Man), or a tale of a counterfeiting businessman (Farzi)… And now a story of love and romance set in the 90s against the backdrop of crime and drugs in Uttarakhand.
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When we meet the two, they are as relaxed and fun as their art. It takes a minute for them to get comfortable in front of the camera, and Raj explains, “Interviews I am fine with, it’s the posing that’s a problem.”
But pose they must—when everything you have done has been successful, then people want to see more of you. Guns & Gulaabs, which premiered last week on Netflix, is set in the fictional town of Gulaabgunj where an opium deal draws big-city cop (Dulquer Salmaan) and a lovesick mechanic (Rajkummar Rao) into its grasp. It starts with a bunch of school kids who come across a murder and a deal gone wrong.
“The seed of the idea had been around for a while,” says DK. “It started with the idea of the innocence of a simple world. These children are growing up in a place where there is a lot of crime. Then the characters too shape—the common thread is that they are simple…” Raj comes in: “…and it’s a coming-of-age story. These are not people you find on the frontlines, we call them backbenchers—that was our working title. The bigger point was to make a fun series…”
“Aren’t all your series fun series?” we ask. They both laugh.
“The idea was to spell out F-U-N,” says DK, and Raj adds, “It was a larger theme maybe—the drama is not big drama…” “They are not saving the country,” DK dives back in, “There is a lot of pulp—there’s an element of cheese in it—but it’s crafted cheese.”
The two, who grew up in Tirupati and Chitoor before heading to America to study software engineering, have the Indian aesthetic down pat. In Guns, they take an Andhra story to Uttarakhand. “It’s universal; our hometown/childhood stories can easily be transposed to different parts of the country. We chose Uttarakhand because of the terrain and weather—it was apt for the story.”
Their shows and movies also encapsulate the middle-class and their struggles—and the things we do to protect our loved ones and vested interests.
Where do they get their ideas? If fact is crazier than fiction, then their process of reading newspapers and jotting down the crazy happenings is the best one. “I used to have diaries—many lay unused, but it made it a habit,” says Raj, “You file away things. Now, it happens in my head. Newspapers were a big source.” For DK, “Newspapers formed the foreground of Family Man and Shor in the City. Even Farzi came from an article we read about a flamboyant counterfeiter who turned out to be the highest tax payer.”
While Guns… is set against the backdrop of the opium drug trade, much like their other series, there’s a huge dose of humour. And not just straight-faced funniness, but the dark sharp type that erupts at funerals. “I think it comes from life itself,” says Raj. “I do that,” adds DK, “I make light of the situation and people may think that’s not funny.” “It’s good to have humour,” Raj interjects, “it makes life easier. When we had a crisis on the set, we often found levity. That’s what we tend to do. Anything could be funny.”
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