Can we ask questions on Kohrra?

Facing their backs to the audience pissing from the front Cop1 Balbir tells Cop2 Garundi in the Netflix series Kohrra ldquoYou know the problem with Punjab We donrsquot confront the truthrdquoThis would hold for Punjabrsquos portrayal in mainstream entertainment as well Whatrsquos it about the state lately however that onscreen it evokes such uncomfortably unflinching grimness Grahan DisneyHotstar Tabbar Sony LIV CAT NetflixhellipIn contrast to the land of sarson giddha gedi bhangra whiskey with loud uncles aunties that Punjabinostalgist migrantsmdashquite possibly the majority among heroes plus producers in Hindi cinemamdashhad celebrated foreverSame with Kohrra on Netflixmdashand the question neednrsquot be posted on Quora Itrsquos simply truthtelling what elsemdashfor 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 1995The people in Kohrra must firstly must not be confused with PunjabisHaryanvis of the usual Delhi underbelly thatrsquos been so widely chronicled that itrsquos become a clicheacutemdashno onersquos captured it better than director Dibakar Banerjee Lust Stories Oye Lucky Lucky Oye Khosla Ka GhoslaKohrra with such topclass production and sound designmdashdirected by Randeep Jha codirector Trial By Fire Gunjit Chopra Diggi Sisodia for creators and Sudip Sharma showrunner Paatal Lok credited as cocreatormdashis technically a murder mysteryIn the vein of say True Detective Mare of Easttown HBO or moody plus pacy American smalltown thrillers like Ozark Netflix if you may Those in a sense have paved the wayOn the script though there are probably more touches and lsquochittarsquo heroin from Abhishek Chaubeyrsquos Udta Punjab 2016 or Anurag Kashyaprsquos Manmarziyaan 2018 DJ herorsquos girlfriend getting married to firangreturnedKohrra is set in Jagrana Irsquom guessing itrsquos a fictional town There is a real Jagraon in Ludiana district where Lala Lajpat Rai was from Either case itrsquos usually hard to tell one North Indian boondocks from another usuallyAnd 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 Britishborn Confused Desi and his missing Brit friend for a whodunnit as it weremdashKohrra would be a board gameWhich only the uniquely gifted can be great at writing so charmingly that you neednrsquot bother with any layering at all Itrsquos not for nothing that we still worship Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doylemdashthatrsquos what they pulled off effortlessly repeatedlyOften 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 pointpurpose It doesnrsquot occur for a conflict in a scene Neither does it necessarily detail a strong moral Itrsquos just thereFor me as an audience in Kohrra itrsquos that bit when policeman Balbir says ldquoPyaar badi gdu cheez hai love is a bitchrdquo And much later his colleague Garundi goes have screenshotted subtitles ldquoFunny how we donrsquot fing understand our own families our whole livesrdquoPick those two passwordsmdashtake the other when one doesnrsquot workmdashand you will unlock all thatrsquos going on throughout KohrraItrsquos foremost about poor parenting isnrsquot it I reckon that is the worldrsquos problem number onemdashthe rest from fanaticism to fratricide cheats to ganglords are symptoms Pretty sure it starts with the father firstEspecially in societies so impenetrably patriarchal that even the socialeconomic class canrsquot 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 lsquomartial racersquo theory on his son found deadViolence will eventually erupt as a means of expression in worlds so repressedmdashso will sex in its more bizarre forms EvidentlyWherein cop Gurundi is sleeping with his brotherrsquos wife the married woman with child is risking all for an old college flame overworked truckers are into transexuals reportedly a subculturehellipI slowwatched Kohrra over three days Itrsquos the opposite of bingewatching Because you donrsquot want it to end And that is what quality content whether food or film is a thing to savourAlso Kohrra is a miniseries that I pray to God all shows become To answer my prayer God says nomdashOTT will be the new TV with everything going on for neverending seasonsepisodes once a captive audience has been tappedThat said we could watch Balbir and Gurundi for longer In 2022 on the jury of the Hitlist OTT Awards it took us forevermdashincessantly matching images stills on Googlemdashto even get the name of ldquothe other superb Sardar guyrdquo from CAT we wished to nominate for lsquobest supporting actorrsquoThatrsquos Suvinder VickymdashBalbir from Kohrra Wonrsquot be hard to recall him anymore Likewise wersquod nominated Barun Sobti Garundi for the same awardcategory in 2021 for Asur Voot He wasnrsquot frontrunnerBagged all public votes online Hersquos that huge on soapsnetwork TVBetween these two we probably have the finest desi buddycops no Barring Hathiram Chaudhary Jaydeep Alhawat and Imran Ansari Ishwak Singh from Paatal Lok Prime Video of courseMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper