Nowhere to belong: Migration narratives in Eeb Allay Oo! (2019) and Gamak Ghar (2019)

Abstract

This article analyses the narratives of migration in the films Eeb Allay Oo! and Gamak Ghar which also incidentally speak to a moment in India during the pandemic when the precarious lives of migrants working in the informal sector took centre stage in the public discourse. While Eeb Allay Oo! follows the life of a migrant unable to find suitable work till he is recruited as a monkey repeller in central Delhi, Gamak Ghar introspects the idea of home in the filmmaker’s own village near Darbhanga in Bihar when various family members leave it to work and live elsewhere. The article addresses these films through an interdisciplinary lens of migration studies and cinema studies and as alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema of the country in terms of aesthetics and the circular journeys of the filmmakers themselves.