Kohrra and Paatal Lok creator Sudip Sharma on his fascination for violence, why Tom and Jerry is a ‘dangerous’ show and his version of DDLJ

Sudip Sharma, who has co-created the Clean Slate Filmz backed show with Gunjit Chopra and Diggi Sisodia, says Kohrra is an investigative drama on the surface but is actually interested in exploring relationships and human psyche in a manner rarely done on screen.

In an interview with indianexpress.com, Sharma opens up about how the project fell in place, his fascination for violence, how he looks at Punjab differently and what would his version of Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol’s classic Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge–a film which stamped the pop culture image of Punjab on the big screen–look like.

Edited Excerpts:

What is the origins story of Kohrra?

The writers and the creators of the show Gunjit Chopra and Diggi Sisodia came to me with this idea which was in its early stage during the pandemic. Initially, I was a little skeptical about taking this up. On the face of it, it seemed like a crime investigative drama and I was just coming off Paatal Lok. I didn’t want to do the same genre, because you always fear becoming a one-trick pony. But there was so much potential in exploring human relationships in the idea, that I felt it can go beyond just being a crime investigative drama.

I realised that the investigation of the crime needn’t necessarily be the focal point of the show. That’s a device for you to begin the story and for people to keep watching it, but it can be a lot more than that. In Paatal Lok, the investigation was secondary to what it was trying to say about this moment of time and space in the country. Here, there was an opportunity to talk about family as the unit of politics and relationship as the focal point of the story. It all began with a line from Charles Bukowski, that says ‘Love is a dog from hell’. That was our starting point.

The Punjab of Yash Chopra was very vibrant, romantic, happy. Your Punjab is quite the opposite. How do you look at it? Especially because all your stories are deeply rooted in the land they are set in.

It is very important for me. I strongly believe if you can take the place and time out of a story and change it, if I am telling Kohrra set in Punjab of 2021-22, and if you take the same story in Madhya Pradesh and make it in another time, then it is not a story worth being told. Because so much of who these people are, what these people are at this point of time comes from the land, the culture. Sure, I can adapt it but I can’t take the story and place it anywhere else because it won’t ring true. The fact that there is this NRI angle on the show, the attachment to land, which is the bone of contention between the families, the industrial side of it, transport side of it, all of it comes into the place.

For me, a place comes first before the idea, or at least it comes along with the idea itself. Otherwise it is a generic idea for me and then I am using the landscape for colour, which doesn’t work for me because it is just a surface level look rather than telling something deep rooted.

What would a DDLJ made by you look like then?

I love DDLJ, it is one of those films that all of us kind of grew up on. It was a good film, I think for its time it was a pretty cool film. I don’t know if I can write a straight up love story ever. Love is more complex than that I feel.

What is your fascination with violence and exploring its consequences? All your stories examine this deeply.

I am trying to understand aggression, violence, where it is coming from, I am trying to understand its manifestations as an individual, group, mob, as a society. There might be a lot of violence in the things I do but I really it is not for effect, where the violence isn’t there because it is cool. I am not interested in the cool ketchup-y violence. Tom and Jerry is a very violent show, but there are no consequences to the violence, and that for me is more dangerous.

You are telling a kid watching it that you can take a pan and hit on someone’s head. There will be an anda on top of the person’s head but if you caress it, it will disappear. If you are showing violence for what it is, that if you take a hammer and hit on someone’s head, it becomes a splotch. I would like to believe that there is something to be understood from that about violence. I am actually trying to learn it for myself.