All We Imagine as Light: A Glow That Neither Dazzles Nor Blinds

All we Imagine as Light has three female protagonists. But by no means is it a feminist film.
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All we Imagine as Light has three female protagonists. But by no means is it a feminist film. It does not once make a statement, subtly or strongly or hold up a flag about the marginalization or oppression or subjugation of women in a patriarchal world. In fact, the Bombay or Mumbai we get to see in the film is a strongly secular city without caste, gender or community schisms. The only sign of any religious identity flashes across in the teeming crowds of the Ganapati Visarjan happening in the Hindu month of Bhadrapada. So, the first half of the film is filled with heavy showers, sudden and expected.

The story is about three women belonging to different backgrounds, ages, education and social status trying to eke out a livelihood on a day-to-day basis accepting the city and the life within it as a part of their destiny. When you watch the lives of these three women unfold on screen, inch by slow inch, Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and Parvati (Chhaya Kadam),

you learn from them the way their day-to-day struggles are directly linked to their constant struggle to accept the impermanence of their lives.

And you begin to understand how Payal Kapadia’s debut feature film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes earlier this year, the first ever Indian film to have been so honoured.

Prabha, between mid-thirties and forties, is reserved, dignified and works in a hospital as a gynaecological nurse. She is married but her husband went away to Germany and never came back. Anu, perhaps in her twenties, is a junior nurse in the same hospital. Anu and Prabha are migrants from Kerala and have come to Mumbai in search of a livelihood.

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Parvati, perhaps in her mid-forties, comes from a seaside village in Maharashtra and works as a maid in the same hospital. Anu, a sprightly young girl is having a torrid affair with a Muslim boy whose intentions are good, but Anu seems to be interested only in sex, and in the adventure from secret meetings but not in marriage. Her parents back home keep sending her pictures of prospective boys, but she is not interested. In fact, she is afraid.

One may point out that one is not considering here the Freudian concept of displacement where displacement is defined as “an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind substitutes either a new aim or a new object for goals felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable.”

One is considering rather, the immigration that an individual must go through when he/she is displaced from his/her place of origin/birth/family.

He/she must begin life all over again in this new physical setting, find new avenues of earning the basic survival needs of food, clothing and shelter followed by the extended needs of health, education, socialisation, and entertainment. This involves a strong coping mechanism that would help the displaced person to adjust to his/her new surroundings not only in terms of physical coping but more importantly, in terms of emotional and social coping besides the question of adjusting to climatic, language and cultural changes.

We hear of the pain that comes with displacement in the voices of unseen characters. One male voice says that though he has been living in Mumbai for 23 years, it has never become his home. But he is terrified of going back to his native place. Another voice, sometime later, says,

“I don’t feel Mumbai is a city of dreams; I feel it is a city of illusions.”

These women are not looking for love or happiness in this city. They are looking for that slight ray of light within the darkness of their lives. But they are not ones to crib or cry or complain. They teach themselves to fight, to become a part of the struggling mainstream.

The film opens with Prabha standing on the footboard of a local train’s compartment looking at the gathering crowds outside, selling flowers and fruits and vegetables, till she reaches her hospital to join her service or commutes back to her apology of a flat she shares with Anu who she treats like a younger sister.

A still of Divya Prabha as ‘Anu’ from the film

Prabha finds the young Keralite doctor who keeps fumbling with his Hindi pulled towards her. Not that she does not like him, but she lives in the hope that one day, perhaps, her husband will come back to fetch her. Perhaps as a sad “substitute”, she hugs and caresses a bright red, gleaming rice cooker when she is alone, wishing that since it came from a Germany address, it may be from her husband.

Anu is constantly looking out for her secret meetings with Shiaz, her boyfriend who is ready to change to a Hindu name to make her parents agree to her ‘friendship” with him. Parvati is forced to leave the city when builders threaten to pull down the shanty in which she lives, and she cannot prove ownership because she has no documents to prove it. Anu and Prabha go along with Parvati to her seaside village to help her settle down.

There is some bright ray of light that steps into their lives as the three women learn to rejoice near the sea,

Parvati jumping into the waves while Prabha watching her with a smile but refusing to enter the waters. Anu, who has brought along Shiaz in secret, finds out alcoves and caves near the sea to make out and is surprised to discover graffiti carved on the walls of the cave done by lovers before them. One graffiti states in Malayalam, “our love is like the endless sea” which she knows is the work of Shiaz and smiles. The camera then cuts to show her fast asleep on Shiaz’s lap.

There is a beautiful scene in which Parvati shares a bottle of liquor with the two younger women and begins a wild dance with Anu. Prabha keeps watching with a smile, surprised at her own drunk self.

Also Read: Ritwik Ghatak and his Celluloid Women

The Mumbai locals form the spinal cord of the entire film. Prabha and Anu can see the trains in long shots from the window of their room. But only Prabha is interested in watching the trains with a soft smile. Otherwise, we hardly see her smile or laugh or even cry. Anu is the chirpy one, a bit scared of Prabha but goes along with her with their pregnant cat to the doctor.

Kani Kusruti brings the film alive with her quiet dignity, through her blue uniform, sans smile while Divya brings the screen alive with her chirpy self, eager to have a clandestine bit of sex or apply some lipstick to her lips or buy a burqua from a shop on Shiaz’s suggestion or enjoy brushing against Shiaz in a crowded bus. Chhaya is the no-nonsense woman who realizes that hers is a hopeless case, but she is not ready to shift to her son’s place. So, she decides to move back to her village and even gets a cooking job there.

Their performances are just so perfect that we feel they really belong to the film and not to the world out there.

The music track sticks to the soft, subtle strokes of the piano throughout the film like an invisible ‘support system’ for the visuals in the foreground without dominating the scenario. Topshe’s original soundtrack beautifully brings in the metaphor of the running train broken by the sounds of the waves, the sound of dry tree leaves cracking under the feet of Prabha and Anu and Shiaz and other ambient sounds that dot but do not disturb the film.

Ranabir Das’ cinematography allows blue to dominate the visuals even when the story shifts from Mumbai to the seaside village and the women are no longer dressed in blue. But there is the blue of the sky, and the blue of the waves and blue becomes the light at the end of the dark tunnel of their lives. But having lived in a dark tunnel for so long, won’t they be blinded by the light?

A still of Kani Kusruti as ‘Prabha’ from the film

All We Imagine as Light reflects the fluidity of a river that flows to channelise frustration blending with acceptance through the lives of these three bold women in different ways. It tells and shows us how they learn to cope with this displacement, be it circumstantial, or self-willed or mandatory or a combination of any of these two or three.

As a debutante filmmaker, Payal Kapadia does not impose any political belief in the film but allows the politics and the tragedy of migration to emerge from the story, and the characters within the film.

The film does not subscribe to any definite political ideology. Yet, there is an undercurrent of politics that emerges almost naturally as the film unfolds, cinematographically, in terms of the narrative, the characters, the incidents and the interactions between and among the characters. What a film! Take a bow Kapadia and your entire cast and crew!!!

Image Courtesy: Author

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Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist, film scholar and author based in Kolkata. She has won the National Award twice, in 1991 and 2000. She has authored 26 published titles of which 14 are on different areas of Indian cinema. She holds two Masters Degrees and a Ph.D. in History (Indian Cinema). She has also won a few Lifetime Achievement Awards from different organizations over time.

Shoma A. Chatterji is a freelance journalist, film scholar and author based in Kolkata. She has won the National Award twice, in 1991 and 2000. She has authored 26 published titles of which 14 are on different areas of Indian cinema. She holds two Masters Degrees and a Ph.D. in History (Indian Cinema). She has also won a few Lifetime Achievement Awards from different organizations over time.

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