‘All We Imagine As Light’: Sisterhood and Survival in Mumbai

Over a decade ago, on the Mumbai local, I would play a game. Rubbing shoulders with others exhausted from a full day of work, I would stand at the train’s open door, gaze at buildings zooming past, and count every apartment playing the Amitabh Bachchan-hosted game show Kaun Banega Crorepati on TV. This little ritual allowed me to see the connections that tied us together in a city as disparate as Mumbai.

I kept returning to this memory while watching filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, a stunning, intimate portrait of three women working at a Mumbai hospital. Earlier this year, the movie became the first Indian film to win the top Grand Prix award since Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar (1946). Since, All We Imagine as Light has garnered widespread critical acclaim. 

Though considered a frontrunner to represent India at the Oscars, India picked Laapataa Ladies instead. Jury member Jahnu Barua said of the decision, “The Indianness is very important, and Laapataa Ladies scored on that front.” A pity, for All We Imagine As Light is easily one of the most original films set in Mumbai since Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox (with a snub story of its own). It tracks migrant women, who are otherwise ignored. In Mumbai, a city that offers little reprieve, All We Imagine As Light centers that desire for stillness and intimacy.