ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT: What Happens When Love Hurts You

What happens when love hurts you? In Payal Kapadia‘s All We Imagine as Light, Nurse Prabha’s sad, lonely, closed-up face tells us (almost) all we need to know. Prabha has been failed twice by love. No voice against an arranged marriage. A husband who abandons her. What’s there to do but devote herself to the care of patients, not allowing any other tenderness? She does help Pratya, whose dead husband, also, left her alone with nothing. Ana is another story. Ana inspires Prabha’s judgment (jealousy) for her ability to fall in love. Prabha’s too scared to open her heart.

It’s Prabha’s self-judgment that’s at the core of her feelings about Ana. She needs that critical voice to stay closed off, not allow a crack in her tightly-imposed celibacy, a nun-like loyalty to her vows. She’s all-too-faithful to a husband who never calls and suddenly sends a rice-cooker, with no note. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) won’t allow herself desire, for fear she’ll be betrayed again.

So, there’s more darkness in All We Imagine as Light than there is light (which might be freedom of choice and happiness). Light is only (mostly) longed for and imagined. Even Ana (Divya Prabha) isn’t free to love her boyfriend and lover, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) – fearful she’ll be caught.

Rules Against Love in All We Imagine as Light

All We Imagine as Light shows how, sometimes, in some places, and some families, there are rules about who you can love. That’s common in countries like India where marriages are arranged, parents choose a “suitable” match – sending “profiles” for you to choose from. That’s Ana. Probably Prabha too. It isn’t about love or getting to know someone to see how you feel.

Ana, away from home to work for the first time, falls in love with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). But he’s the “wrong” choice because he’s Muslim (and her parents didn’t choose.) Their love is real. But Ana’s terrified about her parents finding out. She can’t be present. They will disapprove. She will get in trouble.

Your family’s expectations, religion, or culture can throw some serious shadows over your life. Parental rules are only one thing. Your lack of internal freedom to choose is just as bad. This comes from restrictions you put on yourself against being hurt again, closing up your heart.

Prabha struggles. She lives in Mumbai, a city that people “go away” to when they have problems. Prabha puts a stethoscope to her heart, as if she doesn’t expect to hear it beating. Or want to.

She’s made herself dead to feelings of love or desire. Almost dead. Surprised, her heart beats. Even more surprised, old longings surface when her estranged husband sends a red rice cooker.

Red. As blood. Red as desire beating through her veins again.  Desire she’s tried to kill and tell herself she doesn’t have. Only Ana. Ana whom she calls a “slut.” This is Prabha’s rule against love.

“Don’t feel it.” Then you will be safe from hurt. Yet, she’s not. Her husband can still hurt her. That red rice cooker reminds her of rejection, hurt, abandonment. Longing. Never again – for Prabha.

Could Desire Be a Warm Light in Darkness?

If you can let it, desire brings hope along with it. Not if you’re Prabha. Prabha won’t allow herself to feel either desire or hope. It’s too dangerous after rejection and hurt. Especially when it’s right there, in front of her, asking her to join in; offering a warm hand. The doctor. He likes her. A lot.

Dr. Manaj (Azees Nedumangad) watches her work. The doctor respects her. They work side by side. He’s lonely too. But he isn’t Prabha. Likely, the doctor’s been hurt, but he can still reach out, from his poetic solitude. Yearning not to be alone. Longing that Prabha tries her best not to know.

The doctor follows her. Talks to her. Gently. Prabha, tense, polite, turns away as quickly as she can. Slipping away. He, also courteous, offers a poem. A poem to Prabha. Full of tentative hope. That poem about scattered dreams, left behind, his hope also a casket he carries around. Until “there she is,” like a burning lamp, glowing; that “I watch to keep me warm at night.”

Can she, Prabha, let down her guard? Be open to someone who wants her? Or will she remain loyal to a man who gives her nothing? An allegiance, really, to her commitment to stay shut down.

She says to Pravaty, whose husband hasn’t thought to be sure she’s taken care of after his death: “We’re the same. We’re better off alone.” Yes, if you choose wrong. Yet, even for Prabha, it isn’t entirely true. She says meekly, “I keep thinking he’ll come back and say he wants to live with me.”

Being “Strong”: Shutting Down to Offers of Love

Shutting yourself down isn’t being strong, even if you try to think it is. It’s a sort of strength born of fear; hard walls erected against betrayal; the “never again” that doesn’t allow hope or change.

Prabha says, in disgust, to the newer nurses who recoil at the sight of blood: “You are nurses, you have to be stronger.” This is her mantra in All We Imagine as Light. She strikes out at Ana’s flirtatious teasing of Dr. Manaj, tells her people will think she’s “a slut.” Ana’s, of course, hurt. Prabha later apologizes.

She doesn’t see, though, that this is her fear. Prabha’s self-judgment, against breaking her oath.

Plus, Prabha doesn’t know it’s also her jealousy. She, Prabha, can’t allow desire or openness to Dr. Manaj. She’s trapped. Struggling. Determined to silence any such wish for real love, in herself.

Ana, too, for all her apparent openness, can’t completely let Shiaz in. Theirs is a dance of “come close, go away,” because of the fear of punishment for a choice that goes against parental rules.

Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) tells Prabha: “Call him.” Prabha replies: “Me? Call him?” Her estranged husband? No. She has pride. A rice cooker is not an offer of love. Or of return. She knows that. Even though she sits, cuddling it between her legs, it’s a cold handout. A rice cooker, even one red as passion, doesn’t give back. You’re the one who has to cook, for yourself, alone; always.

But, the doctor’s sweets? No. “I’m married, doctor.” “I know, but still.” Prabha isn’t free. Yet, only within herself. There is darkness and no light in places where there is no love.

Can love, then, only be imagined? Or can you break free to allow the light that is offered?

Freedom is Finding Your Voice

Is it true, as Prabha believes, and tells Ana: “You can’t escape your fate?” Or can you decide to change the course of your life, self-imposed by “rules” inside, even if they started outside you?

Prabha, Ana, and Parvaty can’t do it alone. They become each other’s witnesses and support. Prabha and Ana help Parvaty move back to her village where she has a job and a home. There is happiness there, plus liquor-induced spirits of “freedom” to dance and laugh and “be.”

Can each find a voice for their freedom? What would that take? Saying, “No,” to the ones you love but that can’t, or refuse to, love you back. And, saying, “Yes,” to the ones who can.

Saving a man, almost dead, in the ocean water, Prabha has a chance to save herself. People in the village mistake him for her husband. The man has lost his memory. He thinks that maybe she is his wife, a wife that he abandoned, mistreated. “You don’t remember?” So, Prabha pretends.

It’s her chance to speak up. Finally. This man tells her he’s longed to sit next to her like this, to reach out and touch her. “Why haven’t you told me this before?” He reaches out to take her hand. He says it will be different this time. Come back with him.

She knows this is a lie.

Just as much a lie as a red rice cooker. Promises of change after abuse aren’t real. Prabha cries. “Stop. I don’t want to see you ever again.” Speaking to her real husband, and her hurt self. Now, she can be open to Anu and Shiaz. Support their being together, where there is light. Real light, not only imagined, as in some distant dream. But love that is there, now. Right now.