New Delhi: There might be little doubt that Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound is among the significant films to come out of India in 2025. The film tells the story of two migrant labourers – Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) and Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter). One of them died from a heat-stroke while walking back to their village in Uttar Pradesh, after a lockdown was imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Adapted from the Op-Ed, Taking Amrit Home, written by Basharat Peer in The New York Times (NYT) in 2020, Ghaywan’s film is one of the most searing portraits of a callous nation’s apathy for its youth – evoked in one of the film’s earliest scenes. Chandan and Shoaib, on their way to a public service examination, are momentarily jolted after seeing a railway platform brimming with aspirants just like them. “Are we going for a war?” Chandan thinks aloud.

The film draws its curiosity and humanity from its source material. In the height of the pandemic, with no vaccine on the horizon, Peer embarked on a journey to locate two young men he saw in a viral photograph on X. One was a Dalit (Amrit), the other a Muslim (Saiyub) – both occupying space in the margins of an increasingly majoritarian state. Like some of the best reportage, Peer’s writing seems to emerge from a personal stake. It’s a quality that Ghaywan’s film does well to adapt, which makes the climax that much devastating to witness.

Peer has been on the periphery of Hindi cinema for a little over a decade, after he co-wrote Haider (2014) with Vishal Bhardwaj. He was picked by the filmmaker after reading his memoir (Curfewed Night, 2008) of growing up during Kashmir’s militancy in the ‘90s – also the period Haider is set in. Peer laughs heartily when people assert that Haider borrows from his book. “The only similarity is that both I and the protagonist went to Aligarh Muslim University,” says Peer. “My father didn’t disappear, I didn’t have an uncle, and I’m most definitely not Tabu’s son.”

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It was over a friendly cup of chai with Somen Mishra (Creative Head, Dharma Productions) that Peer found about the studio’s interest in the story. Having Dharma behind Homebound, helped the film overcome its many obstacles – including the overzealous CBFC (Censor Board of Film Certification) which muted a few casteist slurs, and trimmed about 77 seconds from the film especially in places that highlighted the government’s lack of initiative during the lockdown.

Weeks after the release of Ghaywan’s film, Peer spoke to The Wire about why he’s not a big fan of his work being deemed ‘archiving’ (he prefers reporting), the biggest crisis facing Delhi media, and the one thing that took him by genuine surprise about the film.

Edited excerpts:

Have you deliberated on the moment when you first saw the picture of Amrit and Saiyub – was your first reaction as a human being or journalist? Is it possible to distinguish the two?

(laughs) You’re a sum of your parts. Everything we do shapes our behaviour. All that I do as a human being is reflected in my work as a journalist and vice versa. There are no water-tight compartments. I saw the picture, it made an impact on me – I set out to meet the people. That’s what we do, right?

I’d like to believe every piece I write or commission has a personal stake, I’m giving my life to this profession. It’s personal. We’re lucky on a day when things get read widely, but I don’t think I’m giving anything less to my other stories. A story is a product of many years of life lived – for example, if I hadn’t gone to college in Uttar Pradesh, if I hadn’t worked as a journalist in Delhi, if I hadn’t covered elections in Uttar Pradesh, if I hadn’t thought about the income inequality in the state, or reported pieces on caste-based discrimination, I wouldn’t have been able to write this. Every story we take up trickles down to your latest piece – all the conversations you’ve had, all the years one has put into this. It’s not just one thing.

You’ve been acquainted with the Hindi cinema business for a decade – what’s your observation on its appetite for real-life stories? Especially those that depict systemic failure?

I don’t think I can say I have enough evidence to say that there’s any appetite for real-life stories (apart from the odd exceptional circumstance). It’s not like there have been 50 reported pieces that have been turned into films in the past decade. Film producers often take a call on these things, and it’s rarely on real-life incidents. A lot of it is based on the Taj Mahal being something else – the kind of old spam we used to get during the email era, is now the basis of films.

If films were based on real-life reportage, we might see something on Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, which might make for a fantastic series (which was green-lit by Netflix India, and later shelved – according to showrunner Anurag Kashyap–Tatsam). The only example I’ve heard of is Ramchandra Guha’s biography on Gandhi being turned into a series. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve read about it. But that’s a one-off example of an illustrious historian’s work being adapted. I don’t think it’s the norm in the industry.

Do you see any rigour with respect to the ‘truth’ in Hindi cinema?

I wouldn’t know for sure because the Hindi film industry comprises thousands and thousands of people. There are people consumed with certain issues in that world. In a way, it’s a bit like the journalism industry today. There are many people who call themselves ‘journalists’ today, but they have really different concerns. Any industry, whether it’s films or journalism, is usually a reflection of the broader polity or society. The trends are not very dissimilar between the film industry, journalism… or for that matter even the publishing world. There are all kinds of writers on the rise. You’ll see all kinds of positions.

What was your reading of Neeraj (Ghaywan) – what convinced you he would pull it off?

I’ve watched Masaan, that is enough. If you read films or texts, you can get a sense of the person after watching or reading their work. I knew someone who made Masaan would do justice to the story. You trust your instincts. I didn’t even watch the film in a theatre. I saw it on my computer, a couple of years after it came out. And it was immediately apparent that this guy gets it.

The way India has slid down the ranking for press freedom, do you believe archiving has become more important? Especially, when there are ways to distract or bury real news?

I am not a fan of ‘archiving’ as a word, because it makes me feel like a librarian with dusty old shelves. Governments will do what they have to do. There are those who consider their work almost a civic mission, especially in a time when a nation has been undergoing a fundamental transformation. (In 2014), it wasn’t simply one political party making way for another. One has to do the work. Everyone chooses for themselves, I don’t believe in preaching. I had the resources to write this story, so I did.

It is very easy to blame everything on the government. One of the greatest crises we’re currently facing in the media ecosystem in India is that the privileged and rich owners of newspapers and TV channels – they don’t want to lose even 1% of the privilege. The struggle of Delhi media isn’t that they’re facing the gulag. It’s that they don’t want to even downgrade the model of their Mercedes. It’s not like journalists are being hanged on the streets for reporting. It’s not like you’re in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union or a Palestinian journalist facing bombardment. The Delhi media doesn’t even face the hostility that Kashmiri journalists do.

Homebound is only the second fiction film (after Anubhav Sinha’s Bheed) to mention the migrant labour crisis in the 2020 lockdown. Two films in five years, what are your thoughts?

I have lived long enough in India, so I’m not surprised. And I don’t think it’s just a Hindi film phenomenon – I think there’s a hesitation to make works that grapple with the pandemic, and its horror. Anubhav (Sinha) is a dear friend, and when Bheed was coming out – I was terrified the film might lose him a lot of money. I thought one of two things will happen – either people will come in large numbers, or they won’t. I had a feeling it might be too soon for people to confront it on screen.

Did I expect more films to be made on this? I’ve had no illusions. I think it’s a minor miracle that two films got made on this subject in five years.

Amrit and Saiyub’s story is a dark chapter in Indian history. Five years on, if your story hadn’t been written – there’s a good chance we wouldn’t be talking about it. Are you happy that your story is reaching more people through the medium of a film?

You write a story because you care about what’s happening. That was my motivation. I felt compelled to do it. You can’t control the aftermath of when the story comes out. The only question I can ask myself here is if I was happy with my reporting. And I have to say that I was happy overall, my colleague who edited the piece asked me two important questions – which made me think of something, and I included those details in the piece. The point of writing is – you have to say what you have to say. Whether people agree with you, or if they consider it important is not my concern. Nor is it something I can control. Stories have their own destiny.

The reach of Hindi films is immense, and that’s part of the reason for my interest in cinema. There are things you can do in an essay that you can’t do in film. But there are also things one can do on screen and reach spaces that no piece written in English will ever reach.

I wrote in my review that Homebound reminded me of early Salim-Javed, of the disillusioned, dispossessed youth in the ‘70s. Do you see any parallels?

I don’t think we should get lost in comparisons. I think that the opening image of Homebound is an essential, necessary and urgent image of India today. You have hundreds of people crossing the tracks to apply for the lowest-levels of sarkari naukri. Think tanks have been going on about ‘demographic dividend’ since I was 24. They don’t have proper education, we have an employment crisis, we have the most staggering levels of inequality. Homebound is about Vishwaguru and how despite our supposed economic prosperity and diplomatic heft, investment in public education and health is strikingly low. These kids are struggling, it’s apparent.

One thing that sprung me into action about the piece was – for all your talk and bombast, where is the government’s investment in the future? If there isn’t any, then it’s a national security problem – because you’re actively endangering the future of millions of young Indians.

Also read: 'Homebound' is Neeraj Ghaywan’s Searing Portrait of Thwarted Youth in a Callous Nation

If you want to see a parallel in Indian film history for Amrit and Saiyub’s story, it’s Muzaffar Ali’s Gaman (1978) – not Salim-Javed’s Deewar (1975). It’s about the helplessness one sees after leaving their small village and after moving to the big city. In my opinion, Gaman is the only Hindi film that Homebound can consider its ancestor, if any. It’s the farthest thing from a guy being pissed off in a stylised manner.

What did you think of the cuts ordered by the CBFC?

They’re irritations obviously. Neeraj and the producers had to deal with the nastiness. But I don’t think, in the larger picture, it takes away from the film. Sure, if a couple of scenes hadn’t been clipped, it would have looked better. But I think it’s remarkable what they’ve managed – despite a hostile censor board. I don’t think anything is deleted that erases the larger intent of the film. We would all like our characters to say two more lines. But the thing with film as a medium, the two lines that a character doesn’t say, one can spot it in the eyes of the character. One can condense pages worth of description in a single glance. At times, a silence or a mere gesture conveys what might take me three pages. I don’t think the film lost its meaning.

But that’s the thing – one has to make a film like this, and stand by it. If the censor pushes, you have to push back. One can’t simply throw their hands in the air, and surrender.

Were you surprised by anything in the film – something you hadn’t visualised as the writer of the story?

I wasn’t surprised by much in the film, because Neeraj had been collaborating with me on the various iterations of the screenplay. I was aware of what was happening. What was wonderful from my POV, who wrote a story and then went to see a film based on it, was the character of Shalini Vats, Amrit’s mother. I think what she did with that part – I wasn’t able to visualise. I hugged her when I met her at the premiere in Mumbai. The dignity and fierceness she brought to the character, it’s the magic only an actor can bring. That scene where she talks about aediyaan hi virasat mein mili hai (these cracked heels are all the heirloom we possess) is just sparkling.

*Homebound is streaming on Netflix from November 21.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

This article went live on November twentieth, two thousand twenty five, at fifty-five minutes past twelve at noon.

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