“all we imagine as light”

light in honolulu

versus light in ann arbor

the movie is a portrait of the routine flow of life in mumbai. or, should i say, maybe a descriptive impression that is transferrable to other city life. any metropolis would be befitting. shanghai, chicago, new york city…

mumbai is presumably the city of lights here. no one is really sure what light exactly alludes to. we tend to associate it with “hope.” or the sort of sentiment that is riven with uplifted energy. “energy” is the key word here. the motivator. the drive.

the city of light is the city of illusion. unsurprising disparity between poor and wealthy is blatantly paralleled: on one side is the migrant workers, hundreds of them working on menial labor, whereas right next to this is the skyscrapers, the burgeoning prosperity that is larger than life and than self.

the story is really straightforward: the lives of three ladies in mumbai. two of them are nurses, working in the same hospital. one nurse falls in love with a muslim boy. she has to hide their love due to the stigma toward muslim. the other nurse is married via an arranged marriage. her husband has left for germany shortly after they married. they haven’t seen each other for years. the third protagnist is a retired woman who is being “deported” out of mumbai because the real estate confiscates her apartment and in a way delegitimize her residence.

the movie ends as it starts: seamlessly, without rousing extra attention. the people in the city comes and goes. only the light remains, symbolic of something we long for but are unable to fathom…