I don’t believe in occult, says Saurabh Shukla on Dahan

Disney+ Hotstar’s Dahan - Raakan Ka Rahasya (2022) explores the suspenseful world of curses and monsters lurking beneath.

The story revolves around an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Avani Raut, played by Tisca Chopra, who sets out on a quest to find the truth in the face of doom amid the ongoing age-old superstitions and myths in Shilaspura.

Saurabh Shukla plays the character of Swaroop Purohit who alerts Avani of the catastrophe that lays ahead. The veteran actor revealed insights about his character and his perception about the world of occult.

Speaking about the show’s subject, Shukla shared, “Dahan comes with a different story altogether and my belief about the subject of the series personally is that I have not done a subject like that because I as a person don’t believe in occult. I do not believe that things just happen by some unknown forces.”

“Yes, of course, there are unknown forces in the world because we don’t know about all the forces in this universe,” he explained. “For my personal approach towards anything that happens is a bit scientific, [in] that I would like to find how that actually happened because it happens in nature [and] in this universe. Even on Earth or outside Earth, there are things happening which we don’t know about, but what a blind believer does is that they do not want to search further, so they just put it on some idea, like the idea of God, the idea of demon or something and at the end of the matter.”

He continued, "But a scientific mind would always try to figure out how the things are happening and why. That’s what is the approach of this series which is very unique for me. I am playing a character who looks like a blind believer, but it is also the ancient wisdom which he tries to crack so in a way. As the story progresses, we will see he is trying to decode the age old wisdom which is written.”

Directed by Vikranth Pawar, the Disney+ Hotstar web-series is due to be premiered on 16 September.