Write what you know. That’s a principle writer-director Sooni Taraporevala disagrees with. “If you only write what you know, you’d be writing about a little bubble,” she points out. Instead, she believes in writing about what she doesn’t know, what excites her. From this thought is born Waack Girls. Her maiden web series tells the story of six Kolkata women, who specialise in waacking, a street-dance style that originated in the US.

“I didn’t know what waacking was till I saw Mekhola [Bose, lead actor] dance. I was inspired by her dance, and then had the idea of weaving a story around waacking,” starts Taraporevala of Salaam Bombay (1988) fame. Venturing into an unfamiliar territory meant the creator-director had to dive into intense research. “When you write about what you don’t know, you owe it to the subject to explore it fully. Talking to Mekhola was a start. The writers and I tried to get Kolkata right. My cameraperson and I scouted locations, finding the big houses, and capturing the city’s flavour. The next step was to get the girls’ stories right. Having six women dancing to disco music in an old house—[that juxtaposition] excited me.”