Leaving Home - The Life and Music of Indian Ocean

I finally got the movie. Don't ask how! The movie is everything that I expected it to be and much more. Indian Ocean is a band that has been through a long and arduous journey before they found mainstream credit. The movie takes us through the memory lane of the band right from their childhood, to the early 80s when the band was conceived through to the present day.
It's interesting to see the band members and their family members talk about their backgrounds and the process of discovering their sound. We also get to see ex-band members whose words leave no doubt in the viewer's mind that Sushmit Sen (guitars) and the late Asheem Chakravarty (vocals, percussion) always believed in their music, although the band was never taken seriously until much later in their career. It wasn't until they met Rahul Ram (vocals, bass) and Amit Kilam (drums, keyboards) that they became a formidable musical unit that was able to fuse traditional Indian folk music with improvisational tendencies of jam bands in a manner that has never been done before. The band draws its inspiration from sources as diverse as the tribes of Narmada valley, the folk music of Rajasthan, Kashmir, Bihar, Assam and interprets the music in a manner that is uniquely Indian Ocean.
The movie not only talks about the band but also indirectly brings to focus the things that are wrong with the music scene in the country. It is almost painful to see the band talk about them getting rejected by every record label that they approached, because a record executive felt their music was not a product that'd make millions through mass sales. Sushmit narrates an incident when he went to the UK in hope of finding takers for their music. There too he was rejected because they weren't an authentic "Indian" band - in the sense that they use guitars and bass instead of more traditional Indian instruments. That was when the band had decided to release the album on their own. It is also interesting to know that Desert Rain, the first album of the band, is also the first and probably the only live album release of an Indian band until now. Sadly the movie didn't do much to widen the audience of their music, but it has set a trend for things to follow. Hopefully more such movies see the light of day!