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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Layers Of Lear
Director Rajat Kapoor and actor Vinay Pathak's ode to Shakespeare is an experience to behold
Loss and Longing
Memories can be painful, but they also make life more meaningful
Suprabhatham Sub Judice
M.S. Subbulakshmi decided the fate of her memorials a long time ago
Fortress of Desire
A performance titled 'A Streetcart Named Desire', featuring Indian and international artists and performers, explored different desires through an unusual act on a full moon night at the Gwalior Fort
Of Hope and Hopelessness
The body appears as light in Payal Kapadia's film
Ruptured Lives
A visit to Bangladesh in 2010 shaped the author's novel, a sensitively sketched tale of migrants' struggles
The Big Book
The Big Book of Odia Literature is a groundbreaking work that provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the rich and varied literary traditions of Odisha
How to Refuse the Generous Thief
The poet uses all the available arsenal in English to write the most anti-colonial poetry
The Freedom Compartment
#traindiaries is a photo journal shot in the ladies coaches of Mumbai locals. It explores how women engage and familiarise themselves with spaces by building relationships with complete strangers
Love, Up in the Clouds
Manikbabur Megh is an unusual love story about a man falling for a cloud. Amborish Roychoudhury discusses the process of Manikbabu's creation with actor Chandan Sen and director Abhinandan Banerjee
