In chaos, you understand the real characters, says filmmaker Suresh Triveni, describing his newest film ‘Maa Behen’ where pandemonium spills over through an unconventional mother-daughter trio, played by actors Madhuri Dixit, Triptii Dimri and influencer Dharna Durga.One of the oldest principles of storytelling is that conflict drives drama and Triveni, the director of films such as ‘Tumhari Sulu’, ‘Jalsa’, ‘Subedaar’ and series ‘Daldall’, loves chaos.”If everything looks normal, it won’t look good. And if there is no chaos in the story, then why would anyone watch it? And every time there should be a new chaos,” Triveni told PTI in an interview.”In chaos, you understand the real characters… It is said in the screenplay that there should be a conflict. For me, first some chaos and then the story,” he added.‘Maa Behen’, which will debut on Netflix, stars Dixit as Rekha, a mother of two daughters -Jaya (Dimri) and Sushma (Durga)-whose already chaotic life takes a turn when she discovers a dead body in her kitchen, setting off a chain of unexpected events.For Madhuri, ‘Maa Behen’ was not just an opportunity to have fun but also show a different kind of mother on screen.”I just let myself go because it is such a character. Rekha, she’s not a typical mother. She’s very different. She has a very dysfunctional family, these two daughters. They bother her a lot.”And they themselves are on their own trip. So, I just thought that this is an amazing film which people will enjoy watching and find entertaining. Like Rekha, who breaks all the rules, I think, this film also breaks all the rules. And we had a blast working on it,” the 59-year-old actor said.Rekha, according to Dixit, is as chaotic as the story itself.”When I heard the story, I felt Rekha was an amazing character to play because mothers are often placed on a pedestal and expected to be perfect, as if they can do no wrong. But they are human too, and people often forget that.”I feel that he (Triveni) has taken that thread and created this character… She is a puzzle in herself. And that’s what attracted me. I feel that when you have these chaotic characters, there are a lot of layers which are amazing to portray.”Dixit, the star of 90s hits such as ‘Dil’, ‘Beta’, ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! and ‘Dil To Pagal Hai’, said she has always chased a filmography as varied and multifaceted as people themselves.‘Maa Behen’, she said, is not a “conscious effort to go away from perfection”. “I want to be imperfect. I feel that nothing is perfect, everything is imperfection. I think I tend to choose roles which are very different for me. If I have done ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!’, then I have done ‘Mrityudand’. If I have done ‘Dil’, then I have done ‘Prahar’. If I have done ‘Devdas’, then I have done ‘Mrs. Deshpande’. So I have chosen different characters.”Dimri, who is coming on the back of some intense projects such as ‘Dhadak 2’ and ‘O’ Romeo’, said she was looking for something that would challenge her as an actor and she found it in ‘Maa Behen’.”When I first took the narration with Suresh sir and Pooja (Tolani), our writer, I had such a blast in that narration… It was like watching a film. And they acted every character so well. They set the bar really high for all of us.”And when I heard it, I was like. ‘How am I going to pull it off?’ Like, the way they did it. And I think that’s what made me very excited, to jump into this and just be ready for it. I think comedy is a very difficult genre. It’s very difficult to crack. It’s very difficult to make people laugh… And I thought I would learn a lot and I did.”What made the chaos manageable, she said, was the work done long before the cameras rolled.”I think a lot of things matter. One is your chemistry with your co-actors, especially for a film like this. We are one unit; although dysfunctional but there is a lot of love like mother and sister. So for that we had to know each other very well.”Multiple workshops allowed the trio to know each other not just as actors but as people, she added. “When that happens a lot of things become easier. When we had workshops we used to play games there. And while playing those games, our conversations increased and when we did scenes on set it didn’t feel like we were working together, it just felt like we were having fun together. And I think that is very important for any film. And then of course Suresh sir was always there to add to the jokes.”‘Maa Behen’ marks the second feature film outing for Dharna, the social media influencer who amassed an ardent fan following with her humorous digital content and quirky dance reels.She said the sense of chaos came naturally on set, and the cast simply embraced it and had fun.”There were a lot of weird things that none of us have done before. For all three of us, it is a very different thing that we are doing. Thankfully, there isn’t a dead body in front of us today, but if there had been, it would certainly have felt strange.”So chaos was coming naturally and, of course, we were comfortable together, so we were able to have fun.” Asked what is her process to creating comedy as she does in so many of her reels, Durga said she has never thought it deeply, joking that if she had spent so much time analysing it, she would probably have ended up in another profession.”I never sat down and wondered how to crack a joke. I come from a Punjabi family and ever since childhood, whenever there’s a family function, people are constantly pulling each other’s leg and joking around. I think it came naturally from there. It was never something I consciously thought about.”‘Maa Behen’, which also features Ravi Kishan, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Arunoday Singh and Shardul Bhardwaj in pivotal roles, is produced by Abundantia Entertainment Production in association with Opening Image Films.