Some scenes do not merely pass before our eyes; they lodge themselves in the deeper chambers of memory and return unannounced, decades later, carrying the same ache. I was in my teens when I watched Sholay in a cinema hall with my parents. In the climax, as Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) lay dying in a pool of blood, having sacrificed his life so that his friend Veeru (Dharmendra) might live, I felt something break open inside me. I wept bitterly in the anonymous darkness of the cinema hall. That grief was not merely for a character on screen; it was for the purity of a bond that asked for nothing in return.

A familiar ache, decades later

Nearly fifty years later, sitting alone before a screen, I found myself crying again while watching Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound, India’s official entry for the 98th Academy Awards (Oscars 2026). The tears surprised me with their familiarity.

Chandan (Vishal Jethwa), a Dalit boy, dies of heatstroke during an arduous journey home amid the COVID-19 lockdown. He and his Muslim friend, Shohaib Ali (Ishan Khatter), work in a textile mill in........

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