The Home My Mother Never Found

My mother suffers from general anxiety disorder and experiences panic attacks from time to time, during which she often mumbles incoherently. When she feels better, she recounts some of the thoughts which occurred to her during these attacks. Her personal experiences mingle with turbulent political events from India and Assam’s history - images from Partition, Indo-China War, The Assam Movement and the subsequent insurgency being inseparable from not only her but the mental landscape of entire generations of Assamese people since India’s independence. My mother often writes down these experiences in the form of letters which she addresses to her mother who passed away several years ago. These letters, which prove to be quite cathartic, give her a sense of peace. This film is an attempt at reconstructing my mother’s process of engaging with her memory triggered by her panic attacks.