Yet, the fog of Kohrra is not just a narrative smokescreen. The series we see – where the adults hijack both plot and life – is a fitting reflection of what we don’t see. It speaks to the distance between vintage ideals and self-made ideas; between parents who mistake deference for loyalty and children who mistake bloodlines for blood. When the truth is revealed in the dying minutes of the series, it’s predictable to the viewer, but not to the inhabitants of the story. We see it coming because we’re supposed to. The film-making is replete with hints: Family photos as establishment shots, carefully shot flashbacks, incomplete tensions, implications of domestic discord. But the cops don’t see it coming because they aren’t equipped to recognize the grammar of generational conflict. They aren’t built to notice that passion and intimacy are legitimate emotions, forget them being the catalysts of rebellion. They aren’t attuned to heed the hormonal rashness of love.
“Love is a bitch,” we often hear Balbir say, with an air of cranky-uncle dismissiveness. He comes from a lineage so casually regressive that it rarely lends youth the dignity of individualism. It never occurs to those like him that perhaps they are the ones responsible for turning love into an illegal – and therefore cannibalistic – drug of choice. As a result, he misses the clues. He misses that the story is full of signs from characters who are tired of being invisibilized and unseen; youngsters forced to fight for the right to love and be loved; men and women aching to untether themselves from the burden of succession. Nearly every dimension of the case involves familial friction and dysfunctional households. Happy, the cousin, is desperate for validation from his influential father; he wants all the respect and affection that the man has reserved for the brighter Paul. Paul himself was trapped in a double-life, thanks to the autocratic ways of his own father. Veera left her college boyfriend Saakar for a financially secure future; her aspiration for the West is not only mirrored by Saakar’s ‘rap’ career but also the fact that her meetings happen at an American diner-style restaurant. A pining Saakar lashes out in a way that suggests he would kill for her. Which is to say: The first instinct is always a reckless one, because they’ve been left with no room for voice or acceptance.
Most of all, Balbir Singh’s own home echoes this discord. The personal problems he’s spent his life escaping from are actually a projection of the truth at the center of the case. He has a difficult relationship with his daughter, Nimrat (Harleen Sethi), who now lives with him with her five-year-old son after leaving her husband. Balbir can’t understand why she would leave a stable and responsible father. When he discovers that she has a lover, Balbir’s rage is precisely the kind that he ends up investigating in Paul’s family. Similarly, Garundi is desperate to get married – and break away from the obligations of his older brother and obsessions of his sister-in-law. He hopes to embark on a life of normal companionship, free from the debt of emotional heritage.
Then there’s the sex in Kohrra, an extension of the covert lives imposed on an entire generation of outlawed lovers. The series opens with a young couple getting it on in the field, legs entangled and undergarments bunched at their ankles. (A field opened co-creator Sudip Sharma’s screenplay of Udta Punjab too; there, it was a camouflage for drug trade). Theirs is the kind of desperate desire that emerges from a space of unforgiving families and prying eyes. This is the couple that stumbles upon Paul’s body, and the police judge the boy for his amorous whereabouts. An early scene of Garundi, too, features a creaking bed and moans, while the camera lingers on a framed family portrait. The postmortem reports – which steer the investigation into unchartered territory – show evidence of discreet oral sex on more than one occasion. Even the mention of sex feels like a symptom of a neglected disease, one that stems from the need to feel seen and touched in a culture of tormented companionship.