Abhishek Chaubey’s stories have taken him from the fields of Punjab to the ravines of Chambal. It struck him as odd that despite calling Mumbai his home, he had never quite found a story here. His pursuit of rooting a tale in the Maximum City led to the birth of his short film in the Netflix anthology, Ankahi Kahaniya. “Mumbai is where I have spent most of my lifetime. So, this was an opportunity to express my profound relationship with the city,” says the director, whose film is set in Bombay of the ’80s. “For the first one-and-a-half years of my stay, I lived in downtown Mumbai. When you walk down the lanes, you will see buildings, characters and restaurants that are frozen in time. I wanted to talk about Bombay [of that era].”

Abhishek Chaubey