THERE is a lone tree. A few floating clouds. A serpentine road and then the house is revealed. The house is a spectacle that is both mute and articulate. A kitchen, a courtyard, windows, rooms, and the entrance. The screen is a landscape of desire, of nostalgia, and of loss. It is a portal.
A single ray of sunshine, that breaks through the old window bars and falls on the floor in the frame, is enough to take me where I have not been in years, to make me see that house again, to feel the loss, to be in that house once more.
Cinema has that power. To take us where we haven’t been, the promise of a house. In watching a film, we gaze at a space we can never occupy but can live in or have lived in. In Achal Mishra’s Gamak Ghar, which was released in 2019, the house is the protagonist. The house hasn’t been scanned and it is here that we experience the tenuousness of property relations and through it, the story of migration, of aspiration, and of loss.
The film is set in Mishra’s ancestral village, Madhopur, in Darbhanga and is about the house that his grandfather built in the 1950s. A structure becomes home with presence and this real, lived-in space was where fiction intersected with the real and then, with my own story.
It is real and, in its realness, it contains a thousand other such homes. Like memory, which can’t be created. It is both real and surreal. The house inspires, it acts and it disintegrates. I wonder if the house would be the same if it were made up of footage and insertions. Would I then enter it the way I did?
Denne historien er fra January 01, 2024-utgaven av Outlook.
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Denne historien er fra January 01, 2024-utgaven av Outlook.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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The 'Invisible' Dalits
The debate over sub-categorisation of castes is likely to shape the political discourse in the upcoming state elections
Caste Census: To Conquer Or Conserve?
The caste census is generating heated debate, but even its most ardent proponents are not able to articulate a plan about how to use the resulting data
THE FATEFUL COMEDY
Actor-director Rajat Kapoor talks about adapting Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov into a Hindi play
Mad Hatter
When a leader takes off his topi and holds it in his hands while appealing for votes, it signals something extraordinary
Circle Within Circles
The caste question in Muslims.
Backward March
The Maratha reservation question may continue to mire the next government in the state
The 69% Exception
Quota within quota: lessons to be learned from Tamil Nadu
United Indifference
The perils of tweaking tribal identities
Two Nations, Two Destinies
The widely differing balance of power between the military and civilian leadership in India and Pakistan has significantly impacted democracy in the two countries
Crème de la Crème
The mainstream society thinks reservations are against right to equality. It’s high time they are seen in the context of right to justice.
