From being underwater, navigating through a maze inside a deserted house, staring at a TV screen that plays live footage of last rites and a baby’s birth, to seeing a “painting of a ghost” with a bird’s head that tells you that the painting is actually, “you…staring at the TV,” was an experience this writer has never gone through.

We have just finished watching Kolkata-based documentary photographer Soumya Sankar Bose’s film, A Discreet Exit through Darkness. It’s his first solo exhibition in the city and is a virtual reality (VR), non-animated feature length film. The 60-minute-long 360-degree offering, which can only be seen through a VR set, is accompanied by a series of haunting photographs. This project, his fourth one, delves into the disappearance of his mother from 1969 to 71.