What led you to choose Gurdial Singh’s eponymous novel as your first feature?
I had read it many years ago as a student at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). I didn’t know much about Punjab back then, but I found the novel challenging my own and popular notions about the region and its people -- that there was more to it than robust music and prosperous fields. There was a huge underprivileged class that lived in a kind of time warp. The story unfolded in a single day, from dawn to midnight. The movement of time, light, characters, events and spaces in the novel made it a seductive choice for adaptation.

A still from the film, Anhey Ghorehey Da Daan