How do you inhale a setting? I ask Sudip Sharma, the city’s finest screenwriter-showrunner!

Mona Singh and Barun Sobti in a still from the second season of Kohrra. PIC/NETFLIX

There’s a casual moment in the calmly captivating Kohrra 2 (Netflix), where the lead character, cop Garundi (superb Barun Sobti), returns home after a few drinks, and his newly-wed wife can sense him in the room from his smell, first.

Why doesn’t he drink vodka that leaves no stench, unlike rum — Garundi’s wife tells him. To which, he says, vodka gets him gassy; he’d much rather prefer rum. 

This is in the interiors of Punjab that’s traditionally viewed as the land where whisky flows. 

Likewise, a boy (Prayrak Mehta) in the series, specifically from village Badauria, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, looking for his long-lost father in the Punjabi hamlet, named Dalerpura, finds a waiter’s job at an eatery called Chaapein Hi Chaapein! 

That’s where the characters often gather to order, “Reshmi chaap, Afghani chaap…”

Sudip Sharma, the creator, writer. and director of the crime-drama series

It’s a packed, popular “100 per cent vegetarian” joint, while one widely associates Punjabis with kukkad/chicken, etc.  It’s these minor asides, subtly breaking stereotypes that, foremost, enwraps you into the core world of Kohrra 2.

“How do you inhale a setting?” I ask the Assam-born Sudip Sharma, writer-creator-director of Kohrra........

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