Personal Essay by Kinjal Sethia: ‘Some lanterns burned outside this huddle of bhajans and stories. As kids, we kept close to the elders. It would be hauntingly dark outside this circle, and we pretended to conjure witches waiting in the inner rooms or imagined that the screech of the fruit bats was the call of the spirits.’

Abhishek Shah’s Hellaro (2019) dives deep into the intersectionality of gender, caste, and environmental issues in a drought-hit village. Saachi D’Souza reviews this thought-provoking Gujarati film.