For Ikshit Pande, the word home brings back an onslaught of memories. “Sweaters and beanies featuring rows of ducks, hand knitted by my mum and aunts. Watching the snowfall through my window, waiting until it stopped to step outside. Climbing hundreds of frozen stairs to get to school every winter morning. Seeing a tiger’s eyes shine in the dark and mistaking them for torchlight,” the founder of QUOD recalls. Pande’s idyllic childhood in Nainital is a time that never leaves him. At nearly 38–on the 6th anniversary of his label QUOD, which was birthed in New York–he still finds himself chasing home, all while being aware it is a feeling he is chasing, not a place.

“If it was possible, I would’ve loved to live backwards,” he reveals, “I would give anything to return to that simplicity when things, thoughts and actions had as few interpretations as possible.” To Pande, home does not just mean Nainital: it means being childlike, authentic, returning to the very core of yourself. It is this feeling that Pande and filmmaker Neel Soni have attempted to capture in their collaborative short film: Homecoming.