Museum Of Memories review: Excavating the transient idea of home

“An accumulation of lived life” is how Lalita Mishra defines the meaning of home. The voice in Navneet Mishra’s five-minute documentary Museum Of Memories, she describes her moving to the city of Bombay and how from being an alien place with strange sights and sounds, it gradually became her home.

The filmmaker references the past through the device of a slide projector where photographs change in keeping with the narrative, accessing his mother’s memories and recreating her journey. We see archived moments of her life as photographs depict her getting married, being with her family, coming to Bombay, having a baby, etc. 

As she describes her experience of coming to the bustling city, seeing the sea for the first time, her first impressions of the Gateway of India; she foregrounds her thoughts and emotions. Unadorned and matter-of-fact, there is an authenticity to Lalita Mishra’s narrative that is endearing. Small incidents pepper her voiceover that are seemingly mundane but are anchored to her remembrance of life in the city.

Museum Of Memories is a personal archive of Bombay and its history as seen through Lalita’s eyes. Although moving to the city entailed a degree of loss and the leaving behind of community life of a certain kind, it nonetheless becomes accepted as her home, one which becomes the site of an altogether different set of memories. The film reminds us about the incessant mutability of life and our remembrance of that which is left behind.

Museum Of Memories is part of the section City Shorts: Mumbai at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2022.