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A Discreet Exit Through Darkness is a non-animated, feature length VR/360 film, alongside archival prints, told from the perspective of Bose's grandfather, centred on the disappearance of Bose's mother in the autumn of 1969, when she was nine years old. She had been sent to the neighbourhood sweet shop to buy sweetmeats for a religious offering on the 24th of October. She did not return until three years later.
One of the foremost figures leading the search was Bose's grandfather. The incident dealt him a severe blow, but he kept trying to find her. Repeated failures took a toll on his psyche, and he eventually succumbed to his grief, dying in 1971, before his daughter was rescued. With his death, one of the most crucial links to the entire story was lost forever. This has left a deep mark on the collective memory of those associated with the incident. The lack of a coherent narrative, and the loss of memory itself, has allowed imagination, folklore, and superstition to fill the blanks, the presence of a mysterious old woman near the house, tales of the evil eye and ghosts infesting the backyard, personal fables, alleged involvement of child traffickers, and the underhand dealings of political figures, in a society already torn by the coming political upheaval, the Noakhali massacre, and the Bangladesh Liberation War.
In the film, Bose's grandfather's voice narrates the search as though he still walks the house himself, a crow Man returning to retrace his steps. His ancestral house was demolished after his death, but the film reimagines it as it once stood, an old, abandoned house where the bael tree still grows, just as he once described it, a recurring motif that anchors past to present. Children play beneath it now, but local legend holds that on every full moon, a man returns to that spot, searching for his daughter, a belief strong enough that no one, not even developers, has built on that land. Through this, the film opens onto a wider question, how in India, ghosts often become the vessel through which oral history survives, carrying memory across decades in a form that outlasts written record. Fifty five years on, the disappearance has become exactly that kind of inherited memory.Through the film and photographs, Bose delves into the darkest reaches of his family history, examining its conflicts with the personal narratives of household members around an incident that took place more than half a century ago. The work also traces parallel histories of Bengal that shaped Midnapore, the town where Bose grew up, the colonial suppression of the 1943 Bengal famine.
Sound clip from the film : Link
Single channel 360/VR Film
51 min 17 sec
