‘If you look around the world at people of colour, religion, caste, sexuality or any of the marginalised communities, we are always talking in numbers.’
‘We are always assigning them a statistic.’
‘That is an easy way to assuage your urban guilt. Because you hide your apathy with hollow sympathy.’
‘We are, in a way, making them invisible.’
IMAGE: Vishal Jethwa and Ishaan Khatter in Homebound.
Director Neeraj Ghaywan‘s Homebound had a splashy premiere at the Cannes film festival, where he walked the red carpet with his cast members Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor as well as Producers Karan Johar, Somen Mishra and Natasha Poonawalla. The film’s executive producer Martin Scorsese was not able to attend the festival.
But beneath the glamour and paparazzi shots, Homebound is a heartbreaking story about two friends from a village in Uttar Pradesh — one a Muslim and the other a Dalit, and their dreams, struggles and a long journey they take during the peak COVID phase.
The story is inspired by an article written by journalist Basharat Peer.
Ghaywan discusses his film and its backdrop with Aseem Chhabra, and says, “More than 60 percent of our population lives in villages but we never talk about our villages in our films. The villages are absent. We only talk about urban or small towns. Even then, there is an urban gaze. Look how uncool, how funny, how uncultured they are.”
IMAGE: Karan Johar, Janhvi Kapoor, Director Neeraj Ghaywan, Vishal Jethwa and Ishaan Khatter. Photograph: Kind courtesy Dharma Productions/Instagram
Why did you want to make Homebound? What attracted you to this project?
Somen Mishra got me the story.
I knew Basharat earlier, occasionally exchanged DMs on Twitter.
But when I read his article in The New York Times, I instantly felt a connection with it. While reading the story — of course, it shook me — but what appealed to me more was the humanity behind it, the interpersonal and the interiority of the relationship.
It took me on a journey.
Instantly, I went back to Hyderabad, my growing up there, and my neighbour, Asghar.
We used to hang out all the time.
Once during Eid, I couldn’t wait for the biryani to come from his house. So I snuck into his house and stole it!
So, me coming from a marginalised background, it helped me empathise and connect more. Which is also one of the reasons why I got on board.
After that, I think there were two things that I wanted to do.
More than 60 percent of our population lives in villages but we never talk about our villages in our films.
The villages are absent.
We only talk about urban or small towns. Even then, there is an urban gaze.
Look how uncool, how funny, how uncultured they are.
While making Masaan. I did attempt to tell stories from India’s rural population point of view and not impose our gaze there.
The second thing was that if you actually look around the world at people of colour, religion, caste, sexuality or any of the marginalised communities, we are always talking in numbers. We are always assigning them a statistic.
That is an easy way to assuage your urban guilt. Because you hide your apathy with hollow sympathy.
We are, in a way, making them invisible.
I thought what if we pick up one or two persons out of those statistics and see what happened in their lives.
How did they get to this point? That is something worth telling.
So I fictionalised the story of these two friends, until their journey that Basharat documents in his article.
I am thankful to Sumit Roy, who was the consultant on script and story. This was the first time I wrote alone, the screenplay and dialogues too. Of course, I needed Varun (Grover) and he helped me polish it. As you know, he is super busy.
IMAGE: Vishal Jethwa and Ishaan Khatter in Homebound.
So I am going to ask a question which feels awkward. Are you a Dalit?
Yes, and I understand your hesitation.
So the story was very important for you from that point of view too, right?
Definitely. This is something that I speak about on panel discussions.
In order to explain caste, at least in cinema language, you can compare it with black racial history.
But the caste system dates back so many hundreds of years.
The difference between race and caste is it that black people in the plantations, when they were slaves, they could say we don’t like this.
They could sing songs about it.
They could argue about it.
But what happens with caste is that you have been told for so many centuries that this is your fate, this is what you eventually will be.
It has been passed on through generations. This is our karma and this is how it should be.
But you never took it as your fate.
No, but the trauma passes on. Even if I have not experienced first-hand casteism, but like black people, you inherit the trauma.
I ask people to give me names of great black artists, including directors, writers, actors, singers, whatever.
I am sure hundreds of names will pop into your head right now.
Right now, the black population in America is 13 percent. We are looking at 19 percent of the Dalit population in India. If you include schedules tribes, that’s 25 percent.
Now, out of the 25 percent population, I am the only acknowledged person from the community in all of Hindi cinema history. That is the kind of gap we are living with.
That’s why I hate when people try to compare the best methods in America, when people talk about inclusion riders in contracts in the US.
We are very far from that. That’s the problem.
IMAGE: Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor in Homebound.
I love the way you have taken a very complex article, and made it into a human story of these two men and their friendship. And the fact that they both come from social groups that are discriminated against.
I have a lot of friends, and many are upper caste Brahmins.
But somehow, the bonhomie I feel with, say, a Muslim man or a person from the LGBTQ community is different. There is this bonhomie among the minorities because you get the complexes. You will understand if I am insecure, or if I am having an impostor syndrome.
People often ask me why I have an imposter syndrome.
They feel I am the best thing that could happen to indie film-making in India, I have the best of the world.
But that’s how trauma catches up. That’s how these things manifest.
You mentioned indie film-making. Masaan was 10 years ago. You made that lovely short with Konkona Sen Sharma (Geeli Pucchi) and also Juice. I am sure you were looking for some subjects. But what took you so long?
Honestly, that’s question I asked myself also.
But I have gone through a huge phase of life experiencing the imposter syndrome, where I would feel inadequate.
I would feel like I don’t deserve things.
IMAGE: Vishal Jethwa and Ishaan Khatter in Homebound.
You made an amazing film called Masaan.
But I think after that, it became a bigger issue. So the more the success, the more it amplifies the fear of being seen.
In fact, after Masaan, I went through a difficult chapter of not being able to get out of my house, not being able to speak to people.
Somehow, Anurag (Kashyap) and Vikram (Motwane) pulled me out of it and that’s when I directed some episodes of Sacred Games.
Slowly, slowly I pushed myself.
As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to make something on the villages, so I thought of making a film on farmers.
But each time, I felt politics superseded the narrative. I didn’t want that.
I was even considering doing a biopic, but I had to drop that idea as well. Eventually, this film felt like homecoming.
I was very impressed with Ishaan Khatter’s performance. How did you work with him?
One of the ways that I approached this film was to not point daggers at someone.
My intent is to bring the other side, make him sit next to me and say, ‘Hey, let’s recalibrate. Let’s rethink. Let’s introspect a little bit. I am not here to point fingers.’
I wanted to bring out empathy, so I was only attaching with people who have that empathy, be it Karan, Ishaan or Jahnvi.
I knew both Ishaan and Vishal are good actors. But for me, a good performance is not enough. I wanted them to feel the characters.
If you are a good actor, you can wing it. But I feel there’s some dishonesty in it, unless you feel from within what the character goes through.
So I did emotional exercises with the boys.
We toured villages and stayed in huts.
Ishaan had never done this kind of immersive exercise before. Once we ate at a villager’s house. And something changed inside the two.
That exercise was very humbling for us.
Actually, I felt insignificant in making this film because it was a life unfolding in front of you.
IMAGE: Janhvi Kapoor with Director Neeraj Ghaywan. Photograph: Kind courtesy Dharma Productions/Instagram
Did you cast Janhvi Kapoor because of your producer’s recommendation?
No. We were to do a biopic together, and that never got made.
But there was a point where I thought I know of Janhvi’s public image, and if I have to make it work, I will have to audition her.
I trained her, workshopped with her for about 15 days for one scene. That was a changing point for both of us.
I understood how deep she is, how hungry she is, how passionate she is about these things. I am so happy that she’s part of it.
She took a whole day with me to just understand how the caste system manages.
She read Annihilation of Caste by B R Ambedkar.
Then she went into her own rabbit hole.
She kept reading and discovering about castes.
I told her the first point is to acknowledge your privilege, your social capital and how it manifests for you.
The last day of the shoot, she broke down. She hugged and said, I don’t want to go back to what I was doing.
She’s like the moral core of the film because what she starts is what the two boys eventually do, that is, take up education.
She says that if you want a seat at the table, you have got to get up, and find our own chair.
