My Indian arthouse recc's are:
Vanaja
Mr. and Mrs. Iyer
15 Park Avenue
Water (Deepa Mehta)
There are more but nothing that I can remember off the top of my head.
Also there are tons of films that are not arthouse films but they are not mainstream Bollywood fare either.
Peepli Live
LSD
Chillar Party
Chandni Bar
Maqbool
Being Cyrus
My Brother ... Nikhil
I find a lot of the films that I watch like you do ... except I go through directors instead of actors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Cinema
Btw, I loved Ghaijani (both versions) soo much. I really enjoyed the Tamil version more ... because I enjoy Suriya's work.
:)
Hope this helps.