Homebound: No Grapes of Wrath

The film Homebound is India’s candidate for this year’s best international feature Oscar.

- SHREEKANT SAMBRANI

Its pedigree includes our Karan Johar and Hollywood's Martin Scorsese. Ithas warmed the hearts of movie aficionado’s. And rightly so, because as leading critic Shubhra Gupta puts it, “if you have to see one film which talks of all these elephants[of centuries of systemic discrimination, and disenfranchisement] that have gone missing from so many rooms over so many unconscionable years, make it this one”.

Inthesummer of 2020, at the height ofthe Covid lockdown, this paperrana series of articles called Pandemic Perusalsin its book review space. Rita Bhandari Sambrani wrote about John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (June 3, 2020), an eminent contender forthe Great American Novel. She placed it in the context of our own pandemic and. lockdown-induced marches of the similarly fated migrant workers and added, “We await someone to create ourown version of The Grapes of Wrath, ca 2020.” Many readers acclaimed that remark (as alsothe column).