Sudip Sharma on ‘Paatal Lok’, Hathiram and Nagaland

Five years later, during a break in shooting the second season of the gritty Punjab-set drama Kohrra, which he also created, Sharma speaks to Mint about Season 2 of Paatal Lok, which sees the return of troubled cop Hathiram Chaudhary (played by Jaideep Ahlawat) in a new setting, Nagaland. Edited excerpts from an interview:

What has the time between the two seasons been like, especially after the success of the first season?

It’s been quite a journey. Season 1 was a very intense and enriching experience for all of us. When we were still in the edit and had just delivered the show, covid happened. There was this sort of vacuum when the show released.

I started writing Season 2 a few months before the show came out. Thankfully, because we had started working before the reactions to the show, which were overwhelming, we didn’t start off with pressure to match up to it. Because we knew the platform wanted us to make another season, we started on a fresh page. Even as creators, you want things to be new and challenging.

By the time we had finished writing Season 2, covid had fully taken hold of our lives. The second wave happened and then we had date issues because Avinash (Arun Dhaware, series co-director), Jaideep and I also had other commitments. But we kept coming back to this, because we really wanted to do the show and we were very happy with the writing of the second season.

Season 2 was a difficult beast to mount because it’s set in the northeast. We were the first film crew ever to be shooting in Nagaland, and the entire infrastructure that is needed to support a massive production like this wasn’t quite in place. That required meticulous planning. Our teams were in Kohima and Dimapur for a few months just to prep for the shoot.  

When you started working on ‘Paatal Lok’, had you envisioned it as a multi-season show?

No. I saw it as a stand-alone, complete story. That’s why there is a closure to the story (in Season 1). Even if there wasn’t another season, I would have been okay with it. Although my promise to Amazon was that, after making the first season, if we all felt like we should do another, then I would give it a serious thought. I just didn’t want to commit to it fully before I went through the experience, because it was the first time I was doing a series and I wanted to see how I felt about doing long-form, would I want to continue doing films, how do I feel about the story, and whether there was more of this story still left in me.

The experience of making Season 1 pushed me to another season. I fell in love with Hathiram Chaudhary—the character, and also the actor. There was a realisation that my relationship with Hathiram is not over. I wanted to write another story for him and to see where he is in life, two years hence.

Of course, there was also this hunger and greed to work with one of our finest talents, Jaideep Ahlawat, again. All of that pushed me towards doing another season.

How did you go about trying to understand the local issues, nuances and cultural complexities of Nagaland?

It is a very different world to what we generally see on screen. It was very important that we do justice to it. There were no films I could tap into to say, okay, this is what it feels like.

I grew up in Guwahati. I’ve travelled to Nagaland. I had friends from there, and we had family in Nagaland. So while the groundwork was there, my knowledge was also a bit dated, because I left Guwahati in the late ‘90s.

I really enjoy this part of the process. Most people call it research. I see it more as cultural enrichment—travelling, making new friends, meeting new people. As long as you deal with this experience with a sense of empathy, there’s a lot that you can soak in.

Since I was not as familiar with Nagaland as I am with, say, Uttar Pradesh or Delhi, we got a researcher from Nagaland on board. Anungla Longkumer was with us throughout the writing, pre-production and shooting. She had complete access to all creative material, scripts, costumes, art backdrops, character names, everything. I told her that she feels anything is wrong in the representation or insensitive, then to please call it out. Paatal Lok Season 2 is a Nagaland story as much as it is about Hathiram Chaudhary and the case.

Both ‘Kohraa’ and ‘Paatal Lok’ are built around police officers. Would you say you’re fascinated with that world?

I would say that I was really interested in the intersectionality of crime, policemen, laws and systemic fault lines, and what goes into the making of crimes, what goes on with the people who are gatekeepers of law and order in society. However, I’m probably leaning more towards relationships now. I want to look at the individual and his relationship with his immediate world, rather than with the outside world.

What is it like being an original content creator in the Hindi streaming space today?

It is difficult. Every new show is difficult. More than the external challenges, which have always been there, it’s also an internal journey. The intention always is to make the next season better than the earlier season, to make the next show or next film better than the previous one.

There is constant pressure—the pressure of being as good as one can be. So you have to dig deeper. The internal struggle is much tougher.

‘Paatal Lok’ is on Amazon Prime from 17 January.