It began with a sound. City-based filmmaker Nikhil Katara’s three-minute short film, Home is Here, was born as a response to a sustainability journal’s call for submissions. The requirement was for writers to submit their interpretation of sound. Katara wrote a verse, but he wanted to add musical elements that engaged with ideas of creation and destruction. The result was a collaboration between him and three artistes: musician Kate Bass, sound designer Varun Gupta, and actor Mallika Bajaj who used movement to embody the theme. “For me, it was interesting to imagine it as a visual essay. I would write a song and then shoot it, but people who read the essay could only see the pictures and the words. What song plays in their head when they see these images and read the verse?” he says.

Nikhil Katara. Pic Courtesy/Mitesh Vaghela