Tatsam Mukherjee 
Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light (AWIAL) establishes its Mumbai DNA early on. A visibly-tired Anu (Divya Prabha), an upstart nurse in a city hospital, is jotting down details of a patient. Age? “24… oh no sorry, it’s 25,” a young woman says, holding on to her child. “Pfft!” reacts Anu, showcasing her mild annoyance for having to strike out what she’d written earlier.
The young woman asks Anu if there’s a government ‘reward’ for undergoing a vasectomy. Suddenly the exhausted, seemingly-apathetic Anu leans forward, and tells the woman about the benefits. “A thousand rupees, and a fan.” The woman sheepishly confesses to Anu that she’s tried to talk to her husband about the procedure, but he keeps evading it saying it will affect his ‘masculine power’. Almost without thinking, Anu reaches back in the reception counter and grabs a box of contraception pills and hands it over to the woman, directing her how to take it if she does not wish to get pregnant, and when to stop if she does. When the woman asks ‘how much?’ for the pills, Anu shrugs it off as nothing. It’s a moment of unexpected generosity that emerges, after the city has reduced them to their survival instincts. It’s a moment of grace most Mumbaikars, especially those that have embraced the grind in the cut-throat city, will identify. Mumbai tends to beat you down to your knees, and then lends you its pinky finger.
Kapadia’s debut feature (fiction) is both an ode, as well as a lament, for the Maximum city. It looks at the city through the eyes of three generations of women inhabiting the city – each of them undergoing their own version of strife. Anu, a vivacious young nurse who has moved to Mumbai only recently, is intoxicated on the promise of being an anonymous face here, as opposed to her small town in Kerala. She paints the town red with her boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) between sharing plates of kebabs with him on Muhammad Ali road, and desperately seeking places for intimacy. Anu and Shiaz have to make do with stealing these moments on a public transport, in the corners of parks, and in vacant parking lots with pliable security guards.
Anu lives with Prabha chechi (Kani Kusruthi) – the elder sister and mother-figure – a veteran in the hospital, and also in the ways of the city. There’s a generational conflict between Anu and Prabha, which comes to the fore in a scene when Prabha slut-shames Anu. It’s immediately apparent how Prabha is projecting her ‘illicit’ feelings onto her young colleague. Prabha is someone whose face lights up whenever someone brings up ‘wedding proposals’ and ‘parents’ in the same sentence, and also, when someone who has resigned to their fate. To her credit, Kusruthi never lets Prabha become a ‘stuck-up’ elder, quietly screening all the information about Anu from her colleagues, even if she disapproves of it. Torn between waiting for her estranged husband – who works in Germany – and moving on with life, Prabha is a fascinating character to embody Mumbai: a city that is unable to look at its future because of its past, and hence is making do with the present.
Prabha befriends Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) – working in the hospital’s pantry – and tries to help her when she faces eviction. In Laapata Ladies (2024) and this, Kadam has conquered a tiny niche in Hindi cinema, of doling out wisdom using her characteristically rough, wry delivery. It’s a sublime double-bill of performances, where Kadam draws out laughs with her immaculate timing, but also makes you ponder over her hardships, without basking in anyone’s pity.
A screengrab from ‘All We Imagine as Light’.
It’s in Parvaty’s track where Kapadia is the least subtle with her socio-political commentary: especially after a lawyer asks for kaagaz (documents) to prove Parvaty’s ownership of her house. Only a scene later, Parvaty repeats to Prabha – how nothing exists without a paper-trail these days. If one does not have kaagaz to prove it, do they not exist at all? It’s a well-intentioned hat tip to the discourse around the CAA protests, where one of the most famous slogans was kaagaz nahi dikhaayenge (we won’t show our papers!), as a way of solidarity with fellow Muslims in India, whose citizenship would be put to test without requisite identification from decades ago.
One of the chief architects of Kapadia’s film is Ranabir Das’s lingering camera, who somehow manages to capture the city’s dampness and its humidity. One of the most memorable shots in the film for me was Prabha commuting back home late in the evening. There’s a sense of achievement, of a temporary victory, on her face, after having prevailed over what is a frankly unliveable city, for a day. Having undergone that hectic Mumbai local-train commute for six years, I could instantly identify with the relief and satisfaction on her face.
A screengrab from ‘All We Imagine as Light’.
Also, what distinguishes Kapadia’s foray into fiction, is her use of music. A lilting jazz piano riff (by Ethiopian musician/nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou) scores Anu and Shiaz’s rendezvous around town. Emahoy’s piano is ably complimented by the electronic works by Topshe; Kapadia’s soundscape of the city is what makes it such a transporting experience.
AWIAL sees Kapadia retain her confidence from her non-fiction debut, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2022), mangling fiction and non-fiction narratives with ease. The film here opens with voice-overs of seemingly real-life migrants confiding in the filmmakers about their deepest insecurities about living in the city. “I’m still afraid to call it ‘home’ after living here for 23 years,” someone is heard saying. Kapadia and her crew get these sound bytes in Gujarati, Bengali, Maithili, emphasising on the heterogeneity of the city. It’s a marvellous opening stretch that sets the tone for a dream-like meditation on a city, its primarily migrant population and their tussles.
A screengrab from ‘All We Imagine as Light’.
Kapadia’s film loses some steam in the second hour when it exits Mumbai, and the narrative moves to a Utopian coastal village in Maharashtra. I understand Kapadia’s intent to bring these women out of the bustle of the city to find their centre, it’s no surprise that all three women find a version of their own catharsis here. But the contrast of hearing whispered conversations in the midst of Mumbai’s cacophonous visuals, never quite has the same effect in a secluded cave or a ghostly doctor’s clinic in the coastal town. It’s in this portion of the film, when it appears to be luxuriating in itself, something that I didn’t feel in the rest of the film.
However, the film again concludes on a splendid note – with the three women sitting in a beach shack, all filled with cautious optimism. As it turns out, sometimes you have to be willing to cage yourself in darkness spanning decades, only to be able to experience that singular moment of illumination.
*All We Imagine As Light is playing in theatres from today, November 22.