Kohrra is seeped in despair and anguish. It oozes out of the seams of its running time such that it posits even lovemaking as a cry for survival, as something to be done furtively and to be done only as an illicit liaison. The gamut of emotions a human being feels in the course of a lifetime, nay, often a day, is compressed by a reductionist director to only two - distress and anger. And in this deliberate distillation lies the strength (albeit, paradoxically, of a debilitating kind) of this meticulously crafted series.
Rarely have I been as moved, and as disturbed, as I have been by Kohrra. In its delineation of a mystery, involving a murder and a disappearance, it enters the underbelly, nay, the netherworld of emotions. Not as an examination of an aberration, but as a dissection of the cachet of detritus we carry inside.
Till, in the middle of the series, we realise, with horrifying clarity that we have a mirror in front of us masquerading as a tv screen.
What do we become when everything around us lies shattered? What do we show of ourselves when life snatches away our facade of entitlements? Are we able to even face the mirror, when our self-gifted and snatched ownership of people is ruthlessly shown to be a cover of machismo for the feckless being inside? How do we face the loneliness of being revealed to our true selves? What is left of us, in being and self, when obsession starts defining our love? And what do we become when the object of our obsession seeks to distance himself? Is seeking love in a socially-prohibited relationship a breach of trust or the comfort of a bruised soul?
In the complex mess of our relationships - within the coverups, subterfuge, revelations, self-recriminations - lie slivers of truth which we allow ourselves to glimpse at gunpoint (often literally, in this series). And the devastation which that glimpse wroughts is also a glimpse of how much we fool ourselves.
It’s easy to say it’s just a series. You realise it isn’t, when you lie awake deep in the night, a sense of acute devastation inside, because you know there are truths you’ve confronted. Embedded in its rage and grief, in its delineation of hypocrisies, is an autobiography - of a nation, a state, a people - us.
Note -
Kohrra is a limited series on Netflix. In the guise of a police procedural, it delves into the particularities of Punjabi society, and in turn examines the very dregs of human nature.
Enjoyed reading this? I wrote earlier on films and series. Explore a sampling below!!
Film your murders like love scenes
Alfred Hitchcock, the brilliant rotund triple-chinned film director once famously said “Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murder.” And I have found this to be so true of his entire oeuvre of work. Whilst critics and film lovers have always talked about the famous shower scen…
Family Only has Survivors
In the universe of pain, we hurt family the most. Our privilege of having seen their souls makes it easy for us to tear into them, ruthlessly, often without remorse. We seek solace in our family, know it be our sanctuary, but have no compunction in taking it for granted: we do not think twice before burning our homes down.
A Meditation on Ageing
In the schemata of life and death, we either drown in living or make unreasonable pacts with death. When the inexorability of expectations meets the grindstone of reality, our senses stop to do rainchecks. However intense our relationship with breath, there are junctures which give us glimpses of how with age, choices dwindle, abilities require real and…
Kohrra captured beautifully by your words.
It’s a wonder how calmly you describe the chaos.
Another sensitive post Sunil. This serial made me think of bringing in drug education and rehab NGOs into the SVP fold. This problem is much bigger than we realise.