At home, walking

In a world moving to a total mechanization of human life, the film inquires deeply into the question of speed and progress and proposes a way of slowing down to find synch with the present moment. In the midst of mainstream cinematic scenarios of impending apocalypse and intergalactic wars, the filmmaker wonders if the human pitted against its own invention- the machine, is fated to lose to its artificially intelligent adversary? Or is there another way of re-membering the originary impulse of being human? It is the story of a journey that begins at home with a woman and digital camera, and grows into a travel across Nomadsland. As the woman looks through the camera, she catches a vision of herself walking alongside a million pilgrims. Filmmaker enters the annual pilgrimage starting from the birthplaces of two mystic poets. It is a small faith with a large following, inclusive of all caste, class, gender- an uninterrupted practice of over 1000 years with a staggering 9 million people setting out every monsoon, from rural parts, on a 220+ miles march through villages and cities across Deccan, India. Rains being a natural shift in agro-calendar, enables them to leave for pilgrimage after sowing seeds & return before they sprout.

Besides being a school for mutual awareness of diverse regions, pilgrimage serves as a lesson in a life of hardship and few necessities. There is a belief across communities that an experience in worldly sorrow provides the pilgrim a detached view of life and temporarily, a relief from the tangles of everyday. Those who cannot undertake pilgrimage can gain some merit by looking at images from pilgrimage. New impressions from a journey conjure an invisible India/ Asia exploring a hitherto unseen dimension of a marginal people.

The film narrative corresponds to the pilgrim's progress as s/he walks from feeling tied and burdened to feeling freer and lighter. Sometimes knowing that best things in life like rain, wind, stars & sunlight yet come for free is liberating; remembering that my two feet can often carry me farther than I can imagine, is a discovery.