The Gujarati-language film Paswaar puts a story about elder care and India’s Parsi community front and centre
A still from Paswaar
Dr Homi, an ageing Parsi man, waits for his nephew to visit. At his home, where he lives alone, his caretaker, Lali, prepares some fish. Before she leaves for the day, Homi says, “Lali, mane paswaar ne…” She gently strokes his arm and back.
Paswaar (Caress) is filmmaker Shayar Gandhi’s debut feature. A 40-minute film in the Gujarati language, it made its world premiere on October 11 in Seattle at the Tasveer Film Festival 2025 — South Asia’s only Oscar-qualifying film festival. The film, which stars veteran actor Arvind Vaidya and Mamta Bhavsar, is a story of loneliness, compassion, and the small gestures that hold people together when family ties begin to fray.
“I was very close to my grandfather,” Gandhi says, when asked where the story began. “He had lost my grandmother early on and lived without a companion for 15 years. Seeing him long for such basic human wants and eventually wear out because of it opened my eyes to this aspect of the human condition.”
Lali’s compassion for Homi is both tender and transactional; (right) Homi’s world is a meditation on a community that’s fading away
That observation of solitude, tenderness, and the human need for care runs through Paswaar like a steady heartbeat. While the film centres on the relationship between Homi and Lali, it’s also a reflection on the world outside: one where the elderly often outlive their families, their routines shrinking into ritual, and their companionship outsourced to strangers.
“Through Homi and Lali’s relationship,” Gandhi says, “the film opens up a dialogue about whom we consider as our own and who is a stranger. We reserve our best compassion for those we think of as our own. The film questions this notion of who is ‘apna’ and who is ‘paraya’ after all.”
Shooting with the Surti dialect was Gandhi’s deliberate choice. He says it made the characters come alive for him. “They [the characters] were not just cardboard cutouts trying to fit into a story structure. Rather, they were enablers for such a tale to be told,” he adds.
The film is a wake-up call for the future
Homi’s world — the red Parsi topi, shelves lined with glass bottles of medicines, the scent of Patra ni Machchi cooking in the kitchen — also becomes a meditation on a community that’s fading away. “I was born and raised in the old parts of Surat, which had a significant Parsi influence,” Gandhi explains. “The first school I went to was run by the Parsi trust. The neighbourhood where I grew up had a strong Parsi presence. The Parsi way of life is ingrained in my own fond memories of the community. And sadly, it is fading away. I feel a strong sense of loss; a loss which is ethnic, cultural and deeply personal.”
In Paswaar, the relationship between Homi and Lali also touches on class, gender, and the unspoken hierarchies between the caregiver and the cared-for. Gandhi captures these nuances without sentimentality or caricature. “It took considerable research and a great deal of imagination to capture the complexities of such a relationship,” he says. “I didn’t want to fall into clichés.” What emerges is an honest portrait of two people bound by circumstance, trying to make sense of each other. Lali’s compassion is both tender and transactional, while Homi’s loneliness is tinged with yearning.
Shayar Gandhi
For Gandhi, though, the film isn’t just about one man’s solitude; it’s a glimpse into a larger societal shift. “While the film addresses emotional isolation in the present, it is a wake-up call for the future,” he says. “Our socio-cultural and economic values have changed drastically in the last two decades. This will affect the next generation of the old in ways we don’t fully understand yet.”
As India urbanises and families shrink, more elderly people are living alone, and their care is outsourced to part-time help. Gandhi is frank about this changing reality. “Families do tend to their elderly, but often it’s not out of care. It’s because of the societal stigma associated with abandoning them that forces their attention.”
A modest production, Paswaar also pushed Gandhi to wear multiple hats — writer, lyricist, costume designer — out of both necessity and conviction. “There is no other way for independent filmmaking to happen. Sad but true. But I did enjoy my debut as a songwriter,” he says.
He found his perfect Homi in Arvind Vaidya, a veteran of Gujarati theatre and cinema. “I had my heart on him from day one,” Gandhi recalls. “Once he read the script, and the maverick that he is, it did not take much time for him to transition into a Parsi.” The chemistry between Vaidya and Mamta Bhavsar, who plays Lali, carried much of the film’s emotional weight.
For Gandhi, premiering at Tasveer Film Festival — a major platform for South Asian cinema — is both a milestone and a validation. “The most challenging part,” he says, “was keeping one’s head when all about you are losing theirs. The most rewarding part is seeing the emotions on the faces of my audience.”
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