DEVARI, India — The legendary Martin Scorsese was the movie’s executive producer although his role was kept secret to ensure the film crew could keep working without attracting media attention. He was even assigned a code name: “elder brother.”

That’s because Neeraj Ghaywan, director of Homebound, didn’t want to go public with his movie until it was ready. He worried its central story might be received with hostility by Indian media — by a country — profoundly changed by a decade of rule by the e Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the BJP.

He need not have worried.

Homebound, is based on a true story: a tender friendship between two boys from a dusty village, one a Muslim; the other a Dalit, a South Asian caste once known as “untouchables.” The movie revolves around their failed attempts to push through the discrimination they face in today’s India as their lives are upturned and imperiled by the Indian government’s response to the COVID pandemic.

“I treaded that path very, very carefully. Like we didn’t disclose about the story for a long time. We were being very cautious,” Ghaywan tells NPR. “I thought: Let the film speak for itself.”

Neeraj Ghaywan is the director of Homebound.

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The film has spoken for itself — helped of course, by the megaphone that is the backing of one of the world’s most prominent directors.

Cannes loved it — a nine-minute standing ovation. Homebound made the rounds of film festivals, gathered up medals along the way, then was selected by India for consideration for an Oscar in the foreign film category. It even made it to the prestigious shortlist — a rare feat for any Indian movie.

Based on a true story

Homebound is based on a New York Times essay from 2020 by writer Basharat Peer. It tells the backstory of a photograph that went viral during the early days of the pandemic in India. The image shows one man cradling another in his lap in the dirt, by the roadside. And that man is clearly unwell.

“Just the care and the dignity, the photograph moved me immensely,” says Peer. “It was a great act of friendship.”

Then Peer discovered the men were Hindu and Muslim, and it drew him in, because of the context of “everything that had come before that in the past 10 years,” he says, referring to the routine vilification of Muslims by Hindu nationalists, including members of the ruling BJP party, and the prime minister himself. Perhaps most prominently this year, in February, the chief minister of the northeastern state of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, generated an AI video of himself shooting Muslims. It was shared by his party and only taken down after a backlash, and a member of the state’s BJP social media team was fired.)

The two men in the image are garment factory workers: Mohammad Saiyub, a Muslim and Amrit Kumar, a Dalit.

That image captured them as they were trying to get home after the Modi government shut down most industries and transport to prevent the spread of the virus.

But with no work, migrant workers, who survive off low wages, began going hungry — and trying to leave. Economist Jayati Ghosh, who researched India’s COVID response, estimates some 80 million migrant workers tried to return home, walking and hitching rides in searing summer heat.

Peer says it reminded him of the Dust Bowl exodus of the ’30s in the United States. “I was thinking about Steinbeck and the Dust Bowl migrants, which led him to write Grapes of Wrath,” says Peer — except in India: “They’re not running from their Dust Bowl villages. They’re running from the Californias to their villages.”

Migrants died enroute — including the man in that viral photo, Amrit Kumar. “He died of heat exhaustion,” his friend Mohammad Saiyub tells us in a tiny tea house in a crowded Mumbai quarter, where workers sat at stainless steel tables to down steaming cups of chai, boiled in a giant, blackened pot manned by a teenager whose face was largely buried in his phone. Saiyub was in the port city to look for work.

Saiyub says the day that photo was taken, he and Kumar had paid a truck driver the equivalent of $53 for a ride. The cargo was crammed with other migrant workers, desperate to return home. But Kumar developed a fever, and the driver booted him off. “They worried he had corona,” Saiyub recalled.

So Saiyub helped his friend off the truck. Then, he says, “the driver told me, you get on the truck and let’s go.” Saiyub refused to abandon his friend. They sat by the roadside, waiting for help. That’s when someone took their photo. As the image spread online, an ambulance raced to find them.

Too late.

Saiyub ultimately returned home with his friend’s body. He dug his best friend’s grave. “My blood is Kumar’s,” he says. “And Kumar’s blood is mine. We were friends like that.”

A personal connection

Director Ghaywan read the essay, drawn in by that tender friendship between a Muslim and a Dalit Hindu.

There was also a very personal reason that Ghaywan was so affected: He was born into a Dalit family but concealed that information for much of his life, fearing rejection by his upper-caste peers if he told them the truth about who he was.

Ghaywan also happens to be a celebrated wunderkid in Bollywood. He got the backing of a major production studio to make Homebound.

He drew on his own experiences of fear and shame as a Dalit-in-hiding to draw Kumar’s character. “In the film, I poured in a lot of my own shame.” And he hoped to humanize a story rarely told, about India’s downtrodden workers. “I felt there is a strong springboard to talk about contemporary India,” Ghaywan said.

Film critic and curator Meenakshi Shedde said the decision to put money on a movie like Homebound spoke to Ghaywan’s talents as a director, and yet remained, something of a “miracle.”

“In today’s India, you can imagine how daring it is of a producer to put money on a film that’s going against the grain,” Shedde said. The grain she refers to is the stuff that Bollywood is increasingly churning out: films that reflect the Indian government’s Hindu nationalist ideology – with macho Hindu men fighting evil Muslims and proud Indians battling enemy Pakistan.

India’s notoriously prickly censors approved the film for screening in the country, although they insisted on changes that diminished the intensity of the caste and faith discrimination that the protagonists faced. Still, Ghaywan says, “the soul of the film remained intact.”

And then, it was selected as India’s official entry for the Oscars.

It was a striking choice to represent India. Just last year, an Indian movie that critics globally tipped as an Oscar winner was passed over by the same selection committee. Critics suggested that was because it featured a steamy Hindu-Muslim romance.

(NPR sought to speak to the Indian selection committee but received no response.)

Film curator Shedde said she, like many of her peers, were dumbstruck. “How did they end up being India’s submission? OK, so those are, I think, mysteries of the universe,” says Shedde.

Ultimately, Homebound made it to the Oscar shortlist for best foreign film but not the final five.

A very personal screening

After all the excitement died down, Ghaywan set about screening the movie in the one place that really mattered: in Devari, the dusty hamlet that Kumar and Sayoub came from.

The families of two young men whose friendship inspired the movie Homebound gather for a makeshift screening on the balcony of the home of Mohammad Saiyub.

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That day, Gaywan hugged the fathers of Saiyub and Kumar, who were waiting to meet him. Both men, elderly and unable to work, sat on the same wooden bench.

Kumar’s mother Subhawati arrived later, dressed in her best, brightly colored sari, gifted by her daughter. Subhawati, hunched and sunburnt, stood quietly outside, until Ghaywan insisted she sit with the menfolk on the porch. Saiyub is from a conservative Muslim family. His sisters and mother stayed inside the house, his mother only poked her head outside to pass on plates of food for lunch.

After the meal, Ghaywan lined up plastic chairs on the Saiyoub family porch. Hung up sheets to block the light. Set up his laptop. Curious villagers piled in. Saiyub’s mother even drew up a chair.

But one person refused to watch: Kumar’s mother, Subhawati.

Ghaywan pleaded with her. “Your son’s story,” he said, “inspired millions of people.” Maybe if she watched the movie, she would see how big he had become in people’s hearts, and “maybe this will help you in some way to heal.”

Kumar’s mother asks us: “What good will it do me to watch this movie?”

Subhawati is the mother of Amrit Kumar, who was on a 1,000-mile journey home with his childhood friend Mohammad Saiyub. Kumar fell ill and later died. Their story inspired the movie Homebound. When the director arranged a screening for the families of the two young men, Kumar’s mother could not bear to watch.

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It was her son Amrit who kept their bellies full with his garment factory work. Now she works on construction sites for a few dollars a day.

“Amrit used to see my sorrow and my happiness. He took my troubles away. If I watch this film — and Amrit doesn’t speak to me, what is the point?”

So as the opening score wafted from the porch, of a movie about her son’s life and death, she walked away.

Agatha Smithson is that rare person who lacks the gene for self-doubt. Brash and brutally dismissive of anyone who disagrees with her, Agatha is the main character and unreliable narrator of Nancy Foley’s deviously plotted debut novel, I Am Agatha.

If you’re one of those readers who prizes likeability above all else in your fictional characters, you may be inclined to give I Am Agatha a pass. But that would be a mistake. This is a strange, fresh story about artistic ambition and personal autonomy willingly abridged for love. And, all too unusually, the love affair here is between two women in their 60s.

Agatha’s character is inspired by the real-life minimalist painter Agnes Martin, known for her canvases covered in graphs and stripes. Martin lived for years in New Mexico near Georgia O’Keeffe.

Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Martin was a solitary person, although she had significant relationships with women. Foley, who grew up in New Mexico, says that her novel was inspired by rumors of such a relationship between a friend of her grandmother’s and Martin.

I Am Agatha takes place mostly in the 1970s, with flashbacks to Agatha’s rough youth in Canada and allusions to a hard time in New York, including a stint at Bellevue. New Mexico offers Agatha a new start and an austere landscape that jibes with her art and own personality. Here’s Agatha, in her typical brusque, pared-down manner of speaking, describing the view from the adobe house she built herself high upon a mesa:

My house looks west out over a canyon that although far from any ocean whatsoever yet resembles one in scope and light. This ocean canyon heaves waves of shale and basalt, quartz and silt. Cloud shadows flit across its rock floor like ghost boats.

There is no other place on Earth like Mesa Portales. I have traveled to many places, so mine is not an uninformed opinion. The truth is that there is a hierarchy. Some places are objectively better, just as some people are objectively better than others.

The “objectively better” person Agatha wants to bring to live with her on Mesa Portales is her longtime secret love, a woman named Alice who’s now declining into dementia. But, there are two obstacles to Agatha’s caretaking plan: The first is Alice’s adult son, Frank Jr., who plans to move his mother into a care facility in Taos.

At one point, Agatha and Frank argue over this plan and Frank Jr. drops some bombshell news. Agatha tells us: “I’m startled but won’t let him take my own breath away from me and puff himself up with it.” It’s hard not to root for a character who knows how to sling words around like that.

The other obstacle seems more immovable: It’s Alice’s daughter, Lorna, who’s buried in the backyard of Alice’s house. Years ago, Lorna was murdered by her abusive husband, and Alice likes to sit every day by her daughter’s grave, which is planted with violets and lilacs. I’m not giving much away when I point out that Agatha’s practical, if grotesque, solution to this dilemma is revealed in the cover art of I Am Agatha; metaphorically, that book jacket hits readers over the head with a shovel.

This novel becomes even more deliciously weird as a pattern emerges: That is, whenever Agatha talks with Frank Jr. or other characters about Alice’s welfare, Alice is never present. She’s always taking a walk or a nap or just unavailable.

It becomes impossible to ignore that Agatha is estranged from a lot of people. She makes brief enigmatic references to a falling out with O’Keefe, and an academic colleague, and a parasitic graduate student who’s writing her thesis on Agatha’s art. As a narrator, Agatha turns out to be no more forthcoming to us readers than she’s been to any of these characters — former friends she now regards as antagonists.

In its ingeniously duplicitous narrative structure, I Am Agatha is reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith’s magnificent Ripley novels. Not that Agatha is an amoral con artist like Tom Ripley, but she will do anything to safeguard Alice, her fading love. “We are all of us hunted animals from the moment we are born,” says Agatha, contemplating old age and death. None of us will outrun Mortality, but watching brilliant and wily Agatha try is captivating.

I decided that, just this once, I was rooting for evil to win — mainly because I liked their energy more.

The wereboar growled next to Black Pudding, a hulking vicious monster, both focused on ripping Puck and Cordelia to shreds. Oberon, an Archfey god, stood alongside them, concerned. But only one thing would decide the fate of everyone on stage: the D20, a 20-sided die.

For 45 minutes on Saturday morning, a rambunctious audience of elves, fairies, gnomes, wizards and more was transported to another land, far away from any concern for modern life, as they watched the “Dungeons & Shakespeare” live show at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire at the Santa Fe Dam Recreational Area in Irwindale.

Lynx the Sword Swallower prepares the audience for his show.

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Before Saturday, I’d never attended a renaissance fair, a reenactment of the English Renaissance in the form of an immersive festival (i.e. why the Irwindale fair is based in the 16th century village of Port Deptford). Although I was not entirely new to fanciful make-’em-ups. My family had been members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval-era living history organization. We frequently dressed up to visit our local kingdom. Once, a wizard gave me a cape. Another time, I won a plague-themed frog toss.

I’d long forgotten what a blissful escape those weekends had been for a young queer kid living in rural America — until Saturday, when I looked around the fair and realized it was a diverse crowd in every sense of the word.

At the “Dungeons & Shakespeare” show, host Willy Nilly encouraged us to lean into the welcoming atmosphere we found among our fellow outcasts.

“Let’s stop worrying about whether we seem weird and make our stories amazing,” the actor, who grew up in conservative Midland, Texas, told the crowd.

And with that same energy, my wife and I trodded further into the fair in hot pursuit of merriment and wonder.

I should note: The Irwindale fair is packed full of opportunities to spend a day. It can, at times, feel overwhelming (and dusty). Here’s what we learned that will set you up for success, should you fancy a trip back in time.

Guests make their way out of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire at sunset.

1. Thou must plan thy morrow

Translation: You must plan your day.

The best way to have the perfect day?

It depends!

Before your visit, I would recommend loosely plotting out your day using the fair’s map. First, you’ll want to discern which performances you’d like to see. Each weekend’s entertainment schedule is released the prior Wednesday, although it can change due to “weather, illness or Her Majesty’s whim,” as the fair website notes.

There are 12 stages and performance areas, each with their own programming. And it’s a real range.

For example, you’ll find MooNie the Magnif’Cent, a fair staple who mixes clowning, stunts and comedy, all without speaking. Supernova the Strongwoman will dazzle the crowd with risky tricks and demolition. And Dora Viellette teaches her audience about an array of music, from medieval to folk favorites, as she plays the hurdy-gurdy (which is very fun to say aloud).

I’d recommend attending the performance you want to see the most early in the day, as the fair seems to get more crowded as the day progresses.

Similarly, if you’d like to focus the day on playing games and experiencing human-powered carnival rides, I’d recommend doing that first. We originally wanted to practice our archery skills, but because we’d waited until after noon, the line was long every time we checked. That said, I did quickly get to throw 10 javelin for $10 later in the day, and I noticed the lines for the “big swing” — aptly named — and the dragon swing were both short. Additionally, it looked like a fairly quick wait to learn from the teachers at St. Jude’s School of Fencing and the Sword Master’s Challenge, where a worker told my wife, “You look like you’d like to hit someone!” (Trust, it wasn’t me, despite my perpetually high anxiety.)

There are also additional paid activities, like having tea with the queen or imbibing via a pub crawl. And then there are the jousting competitions (more on those below).

Her majesty the queen is seen with her court.

2. The Queen doth nay require fanciful garb

Translation: Costumes are not required but very fun.

About five minutes into the fair, I realized I could entertain myself for probably the entire day by simply people watching. Entertainers and guests’ costumes alike were incredible.

Woodland fairies carrying giant daffodils or wearing hats covered in mushrooms. Knights in real armor. Every version of Merlin the wizard, spanning an expansive gender spectrum. Gnomes in tall red hats. And at least one pickle pope blessing people with herbs. You might say they were kind of a big dill. (Hold your applause.)

There are multiple themed weekends, too, including the first weekend when guests were encouraged to strut out in their best pirate garb.

3. Parley with the guildfolk

Translation: Talk to the townspeople.

Around the fair, you have the opportunity to interact with several guilds and performance tropes. “The most fun you’ll get at the fair is from talking to people,” my friend Matthew, who has several years of renaissance fair experience, told me. “As someone who volunteers with a guild, we aren’t just there to sit around and look pretty. Come talk to us.”

I loved watching the fae creatures of the Fantastikals frolic around, getting into mischief. I kept an eye out for Danse Macabre, whose members dance away the threat of the plague to the fair. But I was most starstruck when I met her majesty Queen Elizabeth I. (Note: The actors do not break character, even to tell a journalist their given name outside of their fair life.)

As I waited in line, I observed the diligently trained actors of the Queen’s Court. The lord high treasurer bent down and handed a gold coin to a toddler doddling around as his family waited to meet the queen. He tried to eat it, but was bested by his mother.

“You must be quicker if you are to be successful,” Sir Thomas Heneage, the court’s gentleman usher, told him.

I asked the queen what a newbie like me should know about visiting her village.

“I would tell them that at the fair, there is all the world to be had,” she said. “And no matter what you find that will set your heart alight, you will find it here.”

(I also asked her if it was as fun as it looked to be carried around in a basket by the Yeomen of the Guard, and after a good laugh, she affirmed, “It is truly a highlight of our day.”)

The crowd cheers as the jousters charge one another during the final bout of the day.

4. Hark! What a clatter!

Translation: Prepare for shouting

But it’s the fun kind!

When the fair opens at 10 a.m., guests shout, “Open wide the gates!”

“Huzzah!” is commonly shouted out in celebration, like when you tip someone, or when your trusty javelin strikes the target (mine did not).

And “God save the queen!” is exclaimed during the parades and just about any time the queen is around.

5. By hook and crook, ready thyself for a joust

Translation: It’s essential to attend a joust.

A jousters charges toward his opponent during the final bout of the day.

Attending a joust is one of the quintessential renaissance festival experiences.

At the L.A. fair, there are generally three joust performances per day: the Deptford tournament joust, the queen’s joust and the “joust to the death.”

It’s best to arrive 45 minutes early to get a seat, as the performance space fills to capacity. You will be turned away if it is full.

And it’s competitive. Immediately after sitting down, my seatmate informed me that we were rooting for green and blue, and the other team was our mortal enemies. I hooted and hollered accordingly.

6. There is much fine belly-timber

Translation: There is so much good food.

OK, here’s a confession: I eat a vegan diet. But, I can still appreciate the wide range of food options available — including the iconic turkey leg.

After securing our marinated tofu nachos and poke bowl, my wife and I sat down among other guests. Our tablemates had purchased a litany of fried options, including scotch eggs from the Quail Inn, which also serves bacon-wrapped jalapeño peppers, cheese fritters and “whole, partially deboned quail.”

I personally regret not heading over to Scoops on Tap, where I could have ordered vegan lemon blueberry swirl and mint chip ice cream. Their spirit-infused offerings include buttery beer, mocha stout crush and drumstick stout (which is not turkey-flavored, but rather a vanilla base).

7. Pray thee pay full mind to the merchants

Translation: Take time to learn about the artisans.

Drabbits, hand-crafted and one-of-a-kind shoulder puppets, at the Imagination Adoptorium booth.

Throughout the fair, you can easily find unique and colorful birthday gifts, like dragon eggs or a buy-your-own-fairy house, that would make your nieces, nephews and little cousins quickly proclaim you their favorite relative.

Beyond that, you can speak to artisans who’ve been honing their craft, in some cases, for decades. I asked glass artist Stuart Abelman, who has regular glass-blowing demonstrations during the fair, how his artistry fits into the renaissance fair.

“They’ve been blowing glass for 5,000 years,” Abelman, whose studio is based in Van Nuys, said. “Through the Renaissance, there were incredible glass blowers at Murano, Italy, incredible glass blowers. The queen drank [out of] beautiful glassware. They were the best.”

An assortment of masks are seen in the Mischief Masks booth.

8. Fret not if the winds of fate blow you elsewhere

Translation: Don’t worry if you can’t attend this specific fair.

California has several renaissance fairs and similarly themed events throughout the year. And, for the most adventurous, there are other fairs across the country and world, including the Texas Renaissance Festival, said to be the largest in the U.S.

Fairs scheduled this year in California include: Escondido Renaissance Faire (spring event: April 25–26, May 2–3; fall event: TBD); Summer Renaissance Fantasy Faire in Idyllwild (June 13–14); Central Coast Renaissance Festival in San Luis Obispo (July 18–19); Idyllwild Renaissance Faire (Sept. 12–13); and the Northern California Renaissance Faire in Hollister (Sept. 19–Oct. 25).

I spoke to Deptford’s lord mayor, Sir Barnubus Bliss, about what’s most important to him about folks experiencing the fair closest to L.A.

“Every time someone comes through those doors, I always wish them a ‘Welcome home,’” he said, “because it is my understanding that no matter where you are from, no matter what your life has been, when you come within these gates, when you are within our walls, you are at home, no matter where you were beforehand.”

Nik Frey, far left, and his partner Joanna Dominguez, far right, sword fight with Bexleigh Kilker, 9, and Bexleigh’s dad Kevin, as they all wait out traffic after opening day at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

And I felt that as I watched adults gallivant around with childlike glee. As my wife and I left the fair, I did not find myself immediately reaching for my phone. I wanted to stay, just a while longer, in a world where seemingly everyone is welcome to be just as they are.