“Nakhrewaalii is made with a lot of heart” – Divy Nidhi Sharma

2026 has been quite an eventful year for Divy Nidhi Sharma. While he continues to write dialogues for ‘Anupamaa’, one of the most popular shows on Indian television, he also served as the creator and writer of ‘Chiraiya’, which ended up becoming one of the most watched streaming shows in India. A couple of days ago, the Yami Gautam starrer ‘Nayyi Navelli’, which Divy wrote the screenplay and dialogues for, released in the theatres. Today, another film written by him, ‘Nakhrewaalii’, arrives in cinemas.

In this interview, Divy talks about feminism, conveying an important message through ‘Nakhrewaalii’, stepping into a new world with ‘Nayyi Navelli’, bond with Aanand L. Rai, reuniting with director Shashant Shah after two decades for ‘Chiraiya’, upcoming projects and more.

As a writer, some of the films and shows you have been credited in the recent past have been ‘Laapataa Ladies’ (2024), ‘Nayyi Navelli’, ‘Chiraiya’, ‘Heeramandi’: The Diamond Bazaar’ (2025) and ‘Nayyi Navelli’. ‘Nakhrewaalii’ is your next release. All these shows and films have featured strong women or have dealt with issues concerning women. Would it be fair to call you a feminist?

I would like to believe that I am a feminist. If being a feminist means believing in equality, I think all of us should strive towards being feminists.

‘Nayyi Navelli’, co-produced by Aanand L Rai’s Color Yellow Production, released in theatres on October 16. ‘Nakhrewaalii’ was actually your first collaboration with producer Aanand L. Rai. The film was supposed to release last year. After facing some delays, it is releasing in the theatres today.

We did have to wait for a while but I feel extremely happy about the fact that the audience will finally get to see it. One of the biggest takeaways from this film was collaborating with director Rahul Shanklya. Rahul is a very fine human being and a wonderful director to collaborate with.

The trailer of ‘Nakhrewaalii’ is quite interesting. There is a point in the trailer where Paridhi, the character played by Pragati Srivastava, says, “tune bhi wahi kiya jo maine kiya lekin buri sirf main bani”. Through this dialogue, Paridhi points out the problematic mindset which men like Sumit (played by Ansh Duggal) have. As the trailer progresses ahead, we realize Sumit has a change of heart. The film seems to have been designed to convey an important message.

Thank you for noticing this particular line in the trailer. It does convey what we are trying to say through the film. ‘Nakhrewaalii’ is made with a lot of heart. Rahul Shanklya is a competent director and has made a very good film. He had earlier made this wonderful film called ‘Meri Nimmo’ (2018). I hope the audience likes the film. 

Towards the end of the trailer, we hear the dialogue, “zamaana kharaab hai, dost. Ishq mein pehle launde Majnu bante the. Ab Laila banna pad raha hai”. We also see Ansh dressing up as and pretending to be a woman. The film seems to have a lot of humour in it.

Yes, it does! We have tried to convey a message in an entertaining manner. I am really looking forward to see how the audience responds to it.

You have now worked with Aanand L. Rai on two films. How has been the experience of working with him?

The experience has been very good! Color Yellow Productions, I feel, is the only place left in the industry which has not been corporatized. There, you have human beings, and not committees, listening to your scripts and ideas. Aanand sir and Himanshu have created this amazing ecosystem for creative people which, I hope, continues to thrive. When you visit their office, you feel you have come to meet friends. I hope to do a lot more work with them.

‘Nayyi Navelli’ released in theatres a couple of days ago. Himanshu Sharma wrote the story of the film. You did the screenplay and dialogues. In the past, you have worked on scripts right from the beginning. There have also been instances where you were brought on board at a later stage. Is it challenging to step into a world created by another writer and add more layers or colours to it?

Not really! I have had the good fortune of collaborating with some wonderful co-writers who made things very easy for me. The process of working on this film was highly enjoyable. Himanshu has been one of my favourite writers. One day, he told me that he had a story that he would like to share with me. As soon as I heard the story, I fell in love with it and wanted to start working on it immediately. Himanshu gave me complete freedom while fleshing out the screenplay. As I kept writing, more layers kept getting added to it.

The film marked Balaji Mohan’s debut in Hindi cinema. He has directed several notable Tamil films in the past including ‘Vaayai Moodi Pesavum’ (2014), ‘Maari’ (2015) and ‘Maari 2’ (2018).   

Working with Balaji was a fantastic experience! He was the most perfect director for it. Visually, the film has several unique elements and makes for a crazy ride. However, the process of the film being made was extremely smooth. That could happen because we had a talented director like Balaji at the helm of affairs.

‘Nayyi Navelli’ was set in North India. Does Balaji, who hails from Tamil Nadu, understand the Hindi language well?

Balaji Mohan is not very comfortable in Hindi. However, that did not matter. As far as this film is concerned, understanding the cultural context was more important than understanding the language. Even if this film was made in Tamil or Telugu, the cultural nuances would have been the same. I don’t think there could have been a better director than Balaji to helm this film.

The film had a blend of mythology, comedy, horror and fantasy. Is it difficult to work around multiple genres on a single script?

Not at all! I feel a lot of times these genres are created by the media or the audience. Sometimes, we also create a genre to define a film better. If you look at the way stories have been told in India since ages, you will realize they have featured different colours and flavours. The folktales and folklores that we have grown up listening to are not genre specific. Just like the Indian thaali has different dishes in it, Indian stories, too, comprise many rasas.

Is this the first time you wrote something in the horror space?

In a way, yes. A couple of years ago, I had written dialogues for a horror show titled ‘Nazar’ (2018). That was my only tryst with horror. Now that people have seen it, they would know that ‘Nayyi Navelli’ is not an out-and-out horror film. It is, by and large, a mythological fantasy. We have also paid a tribute to the kind of family films that were made in the ‘70s.

Did you have a keen interest in mythology when you were growing up?

Yes! We belong to the generation which read Chandamama first and then, moved to Champak (laughs). I come from a religious family. I grew up listening to and reading stories rooted in our culture. For the lack of a better word, we have clubbed these stories under this category called mythology. These stories show different layers of human behaviour.

How long did it take for you to write this film?

Three months. I mostly take the same amount of time to write a film.

But, you wrote ‘Sitaare Zameen Par’ much faster. You finished the entire script in a month.

Yes, that’s right!

Yami Gautam’s performance was one of the highlights of the film.

Yami is brilliant in every film. She is one of the finest actors we have today. Once the script was ready, the first name that came to our mind was that of Yami. She brought a sense of divinity to the film and the character. The character needed to be played by somebody who had that quality. Nobody could have played it better than her.

Addinath M Kothare had an integral role in the film.

I feel Addinath is one of the finest talents we have in the country today. He has done such spectacular work in Marathi cinema as a writer, director, producer and actor. This was his second Hindi film after ‘83’. He is also in ‘Ramayana’. I am sure we will see a lot of him in Hindi cinema now.

You wrote and served as a creator on ‘Chiraiya’, which started streaming on JioHotstar earlier this year. It was an official adaptation of the Bengali show ‘Sampurna’ (2018). How did this project come to you?

Shrikant Mohta from Shree Venkatesh Films reached out to me. They also own the streaming platform Hoichoi. He made me watch the show and wanted me to adapt it in Hindi. I borrowed the one-line idea from the original show and created a new show. In the original show, the sister-in-law is shown as an empowered lady. That was not the case with ‘Chiraiya’. Kamlesh, played by Divya ji, is a housewife in a middle class family in Lucknow. She is somebody who does not even know what misogyny means. Her conditioning has led her towards believing in many things which are problematic. However, as the narrative progresses, you see her becoming someone who fights against it.

It was a progressive show that talked about a social issue. It received a lot of love and went on to become one of the most watched shows to have emerged out of the streaming space in India. However, there were some people who trolled it online.

I try to focus on the positives. These days, negative discussions happen every time a piece of content comes out. I just want that people who reacted negatively should be open for a conversation. Every society has different kinds of people. There will be some people who will be opposed to certain things. The love and support for the show has been overwhelming and that has led us towards coming up with another season. If people had not noticed the show, we would have felt that we went wrong somewhere. However, it managed to start a conversation. That, I feel, has been the show’s biggest success.

When you make a show of this nature which deals with a social issue, you cannot stay neutral. You have to take a stand and that is what you did with ‘Chiraiya’.

Yes! What one also needs to understand that being neutral and objective are two different things. When you are talking about abuse, you cannot be neutral. You have to take a stand firmly. However, being objective also means showing the humane qualities of the perpetrator and bringing the hero’s mistakes to the fore. The show was not blaming women. It was talking about the ill-effects of patriarchy. As you witnessed in the show, women were also supporting the wrongdoer. This problematic belief system does not have any gender.

‘Chiraiya’ dealt with the issue of marital rape. Those who were trolling the show are the kind of people who believe that a law against marital rape will be misused.

Every law can be misused. Somebody can frame you for a crime you have not done. A law against murder can be misused. That does not mean the law should not be misused in the first place. I am not a lawmaker. However, as a storyteller, I can try and tell a story that could aim to start a conversation. The show was from the point of view of the character played by Divya ji. In the beginning, she does not even know that it is a crime. A large section of our population is not cognizant of the fact that a woman has agency. They find it difficult to accept the fact that a woman can say a ‘no’. There is a difference between a wife and a property. We are at a level where we have to explain such things to a large number of people.

Divya Dutta delivered a spectacular performance in the show.

There are some individuals who, I believe, are prized possessions of our industry. Divya ji is one such individual. She is one of the finest actors we have. She is also a wonderful human being. She brought out the various nuances in Kamlesh wonderfully to the fore.

The show had a good ensemble cast.

Yes! We had some brilliant actors in the form of Tinnu Anand ji, Sanjay Mishra ji, Prasanna Bisht, Siddharth Shaw and Faisal Rashid, among others. The show would not have become what it managed to without them.

You also wrote all the songs for the series. I still remember lines from one of the songs in the series, “boond nahin tu Ganga maiya, saare upar dekho bhaiya, pehli baar udi chiraiya”. 

Thank you for appreciating it! It was wonderful to write songs for the series. The songs were composed by Raja Narayan Deb, who has done several Bengali films and is one of the leading composers in Bengal. It was wonderful working with him on the songs.

The show was directed by Shashant Shah. How was the experience of working with him?

It was wonderful! I actually got the chance to work with Shashant sir after almost twenty years! I did my first-ever project with him in 2006. It was a show called ‘Chala Lallan Hero Banne’ (2006). It featured Sunil Grover in the title role and had become quite popular back then. Shashant sir was already an established director by then.

‘Chala Lallan Hero Banne’ was a very popular show back then. The show made Sunil Grover popular among a large section of the audience.

Yes! The show will always be close to my heart as it was the first project I worked on after moving to Mumbai. The makers had worked out the basic concept. Once they shared it with me, I developed it further. Lallan was this character who had come from a village and is crazy about films. Sunil Grover played the character amazingly well. I have several fond memories of working on that show.

What are you doing next?

At the moment, we are working on the second season of ‘Chiraiya’. It will be a new story. It should come out sometime next year.