Home and the cycle of time - on watching Gamak Ghar

It is difficult to write about Gamak Ghar without feeling enveloped in a haze of nostalgia. It feels as if you have turned the last page of a book and are now looking back at it wistfully...the story, the characters, the journey you travelled together, and the bittersweet parting you will now have to endure as you move on to another world. 

Here, the ancestral home of the director is both the stage and the protagonist. People come and go, becoming pictures on the walls, diaries in the trunk, or anecdotes in conversations as once a bustling joint family home falls into disuse and disrepair. The family has spread far and wide and now no one has enough time to pay it a visit.

It is only towards the end of the film that you feel as if the house has also agreed to let go, accepting that its time has finally come to an end. A newer, more modern version of it will take its place. While the extended family will continue to visit on Chatth or special occasions, the only way to return to this particular house will now be through the pictures preserved in family albums. This house will now exist in the already fading memory of those who remain, eventually they too will fade away, becoming memories themselves.

Gamak Ghar will talk to anyone who has ever left a 'home' behind. Shot beautifully, the film is visual poetry evoking a sense of passing away of time that makes you question your own mortality. What will remain of me when finally, I'm not 'here?' Would anyone 'return' to me looking back in time? What is certain is that this endless cycle will continue, with those coming after me asking the same questions, what is home, what is memory, what is time.