Homebound

In Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound, an essay is breathed into existence. For The New York Times in 2020, journalist Basharat Peer had reported on the COVID-19-infected period in India through the account of two friends’ struggle to reach home. Titled Taking Amrit Home, the piece elaborated on the government-sanctioned lockdown when migrant workers, stranded due to the indefinite closure of urban workspaces and transportation, were forced to walk back to their villages. Mohammad Saiyub and Amrit Kumar, the men in Peer’s article, were part of the exodus ,and while Ghaywan’s film, based on the text, tracks what becomes of the two men, it unfolds as a more lucid adaptation of the unbecoming of a country.

In May 2020, two months into India’s lockdown, journalist Basharat Peer came across a photograph that captured the crisis with devastating clarity. It showed two migrant workers on a Madhya Pradesh highway — one lying unconscious from heatstroke, the other hovering over him, scanning for signs of life. The image was a moment of tenderness amid national neglect. Intrigued and unsettled, Peer investigated the story behind the photo and found that Amrit Kumar, a 24-year-old Dalit worker, and Mohammad Saiyub, a 22-year-old Muslim worker, were childhood friends returning home after the suspension of their factory jobs. Only one made it back.

For those of us who survived Covid-19, the epidemic is today only a bad memory. For millions who suffered indignities first-hand, the grave tragedy has been buried in numbers and figures. What those screaming headlines could not touch within our hearts, today reaches us as ‘Homebound’ leaps on to the big screen.

It’s been a while since a contemporary Hindi film reminded me of Salim-Javed without trying too hard. I wouldn’t be surprised if the duo weren’t even on director Neeraj Ghaywan’s mind, when he wrote the opening scene to his second feature, Homebound. Adapted from journalist Basharat Peer’s piece, ‘Taking Amrit Home’ (2020), which appeared in the New York Times at the height of the pandemic, Ghaywan’s film opens with a startling visual. A railway platform is brimming with a crowd of young adults, applicants for a police public service examination. It’s so overwhelming that it momentarily breaks the spirit of Chandan (Vishal Jethwa).

It has been ten years since Neeraj Ghaywan blessed us film buffs with Masaan. A decade later, here we are. And Ghaywan is back with another film. This, too, feels like a long time coming. Let’s explore the Homebound movie, its story, and its ending, which are explained here.

In Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound, Vishal Jethwa and Ishaan Khatter play Chandan and Shoaib, childhood buddies from the marginalized section of society, who are acutely aware of their social status and desperate to earn the respect and validation they rightfully deserve. Early in the film, we are told that Chandan hides his caste identity. Desperate to break generational discrimination, both Chandan and Shoaib apply for Police jobs, but instead of opting for the reservation quota, Chandan applies in the general category. When a perturbed Shoiab questions his move, Chandan admits that he is scared to reveal his caste lest he be thrown again into doing menial jobs. That moment sets the tone of Homebound. A film about two young men who try honest means to get jobs and earn the respect of society, but society constantly fails them, ridicules them, and never allows them to shine.