The Pather Panchali of Mithila

Politician LK Advani as is quite well known used to be a film critic I once heard him describe his first experience of watching Satyajit Rays Pather Panchali that stays in memory Halting at each word he simply said Mera maatha aisa thanka my mind frickin boggled at the sightI guess he was reacting to the sense of recognition and debilitating realism of rural IndiaBengal mdash from the boy Apu old lady Indir Takrun to the pastoral landscape mdash that was hitherto unseen on screen for most people in the worldThats precisely how I felt the first time I clicked on Achal Mishras Gamak Ghar on Mubi earlier in the year literally pacing up and down staring at the scenery on my phone calling up familyrelatives thereafter to download the app and revel in it themselves mdash right away no right nowExcept this cineacutema veacuteriteacute cinema of truth experiment without a formal protagonist is a series of long midshots of the directors family home captured over three timelines 1998 2010 2018 in a village called Madhopur in Mithila The actors are pretty much playing or at any rate speaking as they are It is obviously nothing like Pather Panchali Or is if you consider the unique expanse it evocatively draws you intoWhere exactly is Mithila Mythologically where Sita was from Hence her name Maithili Which is also the principal language in these parts Geographically it is in North Bihar touching Nepal and Bengal Achals village is in the town Darbhanga which is a corruption for Dwar Banga or doorway to BengalMaithili which has a rhythmically singsong tone shares its original script with Bengali Which explains that say Nagarjun the great HindiMaithili poet of a more recent vintage also wrote in Bangla likewise the Bengal stalwart TagoreGurudev also composed poetry in MaithiliCulturally as Ive known it all my life mdash since thats where Im ancestrally from mdash it is a sleepy agrarian stretch with lives traditionally centred on simple things Like a song for every occasionAnd an insane love for food on which life seems eternally centred mdash in particular the bhoj feast that involves maangsh mutton and maachh the river fish rahu along with rasgulla and endless eating competitions that ensue where the anointed champions become legends foreverIm only providing contextual background Achals film gently takes us on a more visceral ride instead with the opening still of earthen pots of dahi and stacks of mangoes in the corner Daytime walks around gaachhi mango orchardsSoftspoken relatives switching into HindiEnglish for visiting urban kids in the village home Ladies frying bachkatarua eggplant pakodas for lunch with sarcastic gentlemen playing cards at home surely the popular game 29 over countless cups of sweet milky teaThe home is the family heirloom This is a specific universe cloaked into a universal film about a kutumb family that Achals grandfather wouldve put in place mdash through an image of whom I could sense glimpses of my own although I never got to see himIts also a world lightly held together by beedhbidhaan rituals like wedding birth thread ceremony etc and bhaiyyari relationship bonds vanishing chiefly through neglect born out of inevitable migrationurbanisationThe beauty of Achals soft framingtouch is he never lets heaviness of a plot or clicheacutes of lament get in the way of what connoisseurs of art will instantly classify as pure impressionism A lot like Turner both the painter and the film Madhubani painting in fact is what youre likely to be acquainted with about Mithila as a region Its mildly referenced in the films poster that I intend to put up on my wallFor visual languagestyle as it were Achal mdash who dropped out of film theorystudies programme at Kings College London mdash says he was inspired by the Japanese master Ozu and Taiwanese New Wave director Hou HsiaoHsien Gamak Ghar premiered at MAMI film festival in 2019 subsequently travelling to Kolkata Kerala DelhiFirst thing people told Achal after the film he tells me is theyd never seen Bihar like this before People from Tamil Nadu Kerala conversely felt that they were actually looking at their own familiesvillage back home Achal is 24 years oldI essentially called him to check if I can just buy Gamak Ghar off him Forget recommendrewatch which as you can see I already have as per me its the best movie of 2020 Because real favourites inevitably emerge from childhood mdash most such lists otherwise are exercises in highbrow tastesignalling or academic consensus mdash you cant beat nostalgia with intellectThe first chapter of Achals threeact movie is set in the 90s It hit me in indescribable ways Aisa maatha thanka so to say What I saw was somewhat my own ancestral home mdash full of distant and close relatives many of whom are no moreGiven the lack of videos at the time all I have is a VHS tape on DVD of them in the front courtyard at a family function breaking into loud thahakas deafening guffaws that Maithils take immense pride in Outside of that there is Gamak Ghar an artefact for eternity GajabMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paper