I have always preferred books over films, but with an ever-decreasing attention span and ever-increasing workload, even I have not been able to read as much as I used to or would like to. Sometimes it frustrates me. Sometimes it makes me angry. And sometimes, it makes me wish I could live in a cabin surrounded by a coniferous forest in the foothills of the north-eastern Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh. This, of course, is not a realistic solution to any of my problems; films, however, are. I consider myself a reluctant cinephile now, often turning to short films and documentaries to supplement my cultural diet.

Over the last couple of months, there have been very few weeks when I did not watch a new short film, feature, or documentary since I began writing Homegrown’s monthly watchlist. This has been possible only because of the steady stream of thought-provoking work put out by India’s tremendously talented filmmakers. This month’s Homegrown watchlist, once again, features two evocative short films by Sheetal Menon and Shashwat Dwivedi, a Homegrown original Instagram series highlighting India’s craft cocktail renaissance, and Imtiaz Ali’s ’Main Vaapas Aaunga’, now streaming on Netflix.

Earlier this year, Dewar’s India invited 50 mixologists from the country’s best bars to come together with one purpose for the first-ever Dewar’s Discovery Challenge in India: to discover India through the cultural diversity of its cities and take inspiration from their stories to create extraordinary craft cocktails. Over the next several weeks, the mixologists found inspiration in some of the most surprising and often overlooked aspects of each city’s culture. They travelled from one end of the country to the other — encountering people, practices, and hidden histories that offered new ways of thinking about the art and craft of mixology. Episode 1: Goa is now available on Instagram.

Sheetal Menon’s sophomore directorial effort — based on a screenplay co-written with Arpita Chatterjee (Three of Us, 2022) — follows Mihir (Sidhant Gupta), a pianist, grappling with the death of his estranged brother Kavish during the isolation of the pandemic before he finds some solace in music. It is a premise that could easily have tipped into melodramatic sentimentality. But Menon finds the film’s emotional core in the intimacy of its central conceit. The brothers have no conventional conversation, no chance of eventual reconciliation or the clean closure death so often demands of fictional narratives. There is only music: an exchange without words, connecting two people separated by the uncrossable chasm of death.

Shashwat Dwivedi’s coming-of-age short film ‘Bobby Beauty Parlour’ follows best friends Manu (Parul Rana) and Eelu (Adrija Sinha) on their last afternoon together before Eelu leaves their hometown to study mechanical engineering in Pune. When Bobby Aunty (Preeti Kochar), the owner of the eponymous beauty parlour, collapses from heatstroke, the girls find themselves alone in the salon. What follows is a whirlwind outpouring of their unspoken fears, anxieties, and insecurities about the future — of all the ways these two young women are alike and not-so-alike. While Eelu’s future looks socially upward, Manu feels left behind, fated to follow the familiar pattern of marriage, children, and domesticity.

Imtiaz Ali’s ’Main Vaapas Aaunga’ is the story of the Grewals, a family of Shikh refugees from Sargodha, now “on the other side of the border”, and the Grewal patriarch Ishar, played by a brilliant Naseeruddin Shah in another stellar performance. In 1947, a young Ishar had to leave behind his home in Sargodha and the world he knew when Punjab was cut in two between India and Pakistan. Now, in his death bed, as a long, hard life takes its toll and dementia sets in, Ishar is lost in his memories and delusions of that time — the young man he used to be, the first love he lost, the family he left behind, and the home he can never return to. Like Bishan Singh, the protagonist of Saadat Hasan Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’, Ishar speaks in riddles — of cricket matches on the moon, Martian invaders with small eyes and long tongues, and Mallika Dilfareb from Munshi Premchand’s ‘Duniya ka Sabse Anmol Ratan’ (The Most Precious Thing in the World) — setting his grandson Nirvair (Diljit Dosanjh) on a search for the truth hiding behind Ishar’s delirium. At 166 minutes, it’s a serious film about a serious subject, but outstanding performances from Shah, Sharvari, Diljit Dosanjh, Vedang Raina, and Rajat Kapoor, elevated by an outstanding original soundtrack by A.R. Rahman, make it an immensely watchable film. ’Main Vaapas Aaunga’ is now streaming on Netflix.

If you enjoyed reading this, here’s more from Homegrown:

‘Kuchar’ Is A Tender Exploration of Teenage Desire & The Shame Surrounding Women’s Bodies

‘Vinchu’ By Sumedh Natu Chronicles The Contradictions Of A Queer Right-Wing Foot Soldier

The ’Clean Girl’ Lie: Reethee On Aesthetic Fatigue & The Politics of ‘Rot’