Breath. It's present in life, relief, and frustration. It is its absence that tells you if you're dead or barely surviving when grappled with fear and melancholy.
Almost a decade after his searing debut Masaan, Neeraj Ghaywan brings us another powerful, political and self-aware film in Homebound that will also represent India at the 98th Academy Awards next year.
The Hindi film, which has already travelled prestigious film galas such as Cannes and Toronto, is based on Basharat Peer's 2020 New York Times article 'Taking Amrit Home'.
Homebound is a heartbreaking humane tale of friendship, hope, and perseverence that jogs our collective memory about how differences of caste and religion never really go away, pandemic or not.
Chandan Kumar (Vishal Jethwa) and Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter) are two childhood friends living in a fictional town called Mapur, somewhere in the Hindi heartland, probably Madhya Pradesh.
Both leave home on an early morning to appear in a police recruitment exam with hopes to become a constable, so that once they make it people will be forced to salute them, not dismiss them because of their identities as a Dalit and a Muslim.
Idealism with hope in a cruel, divided society is defiance, and that's what our straight arrow protagonists are. Besides friendship, what binds them together is their collective love for food and cricket.
Chandan is the 'raja-beta' of labourers who are trying hard to make ends meet so that he could follow his dreams, something the mother accepts they didn't let their ambitious daughter do.
The mother is like your regular Indian mother who downplays her problems, says her cracked feet are actually sickles that help reap the farmland. Chandan, who is made to feel inferior because of his caste even by authorities, dreams of making a pucca house for his family, that's his purpose, if not priority.
At one point, a senior upper caste employee at the police recruitment centre comes and sits in front of Chandan after an demeaning conversation about his full name, caste, and reservation. When the official leaves, we realise Chandan was fearful for his life that he had been holding his breath during the entire time.
Shoaib's parents want him to go Dubai and secure his future, but he wants to follow his dream of becoming a cop. He fails the exam that Chandan passes. There's a breath that breaks when that happens.
His ailing father more often than not makes him realise his aukaat. Shoaib can't leave his parents for Dubai and wants to prove to his father that he is not totally worthless. He gets a job at a water purifier company, impresses the higher-ups with his quick-thinking, almost climbs up the ladder as a sales manager-in-training, only to kick the potential job away because of the constant othering, much like Chandan.
There's also Sudha Bharti (Janhvi Kapoor), an educated Dalit woman who is the daughter of a lineman with no degree, something she considers a failure. Chandan and Shoaib meet her at the railway platform that's teeming with other potential constables who are waiting for the train.
Just like the platform, there's no space to breathe even in the train. Sudha also appears for the police recruitment exam because she wants her own seat at the table. She's slightly better off than Chandan who enrols into an English-medium government college to be around her. She fights her own demons and so does Chandan, and as it happens in life, differences drive you away from the people you have come to love.
From Mapur, Homebound travels to Surat where Chandan and eventually Shoaib start working in cloth mills as workers. They work hard and celebrate with fellow migrant workers, also enjoying the homemade aachaar sent by Chandan's mother.
Slowly, the pandemic creeps on us and our protagonists. The 21-day lockdown is announced and everybody is out of jobs. The markets, mills, and neighbourhoods are empty. Police is patrolling the streets asking people to stay put in their homes. With unemployment, hunger and disease are also out to get them.
Soon, the migrant exodus begins. Thousands of workers start walking towards their homes that are thousands of kilometers away. Chandan and Shoaib also hit the road, sometimes running, on top of a truck, and then walking on a neverending path.
In the end, like Peer's article, Homebound becomes all about walking each other home. Call it cruelty of fate or life, one day, on the highway to home, one of the friends takes his last breath.
"Ball ka wajood hawa mein hai dost, zameen par toh bas padi rehti hai," says Chandan earlier in the film.
Like Masaan's climax, Homebound is also losing and finding, the bittersweet truth about life.
It's probably in a long time that India has a chance to break into the top 5 nominations list for Best Academy Award for an International Film, a recognition that has been an elusive mirage since Lagaan in 2002. Here's hoping Homebound, which has also master Hollywood filmmaker Martin Scorsese attached as executive producer, this time brings that Oscar home.
Also Read | Neeraj Ghaywan Explains Why It Took 10 Years To Make His Second Film Homebound
-
Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa, Janhvi Kapoor.
