It's Beautiful Here Too

All We Imagine as Light #2

Jan 06, 2025

“It’s beautiful here too.” Payal Kapadia ends All We Imagine as Light with this dialogue. I clear the tears in my eyes, watch the film till the credits end, quickly search for Topshe’s finale song on my device and put it on my earphones to save the film from slipping away from me. I tweet, “This is what we live for.”

I step out of my room and I take a walk around campus. I find a quiet corner. I watch the tall tree, its shadow on the high wall. I approach the tree, I touch it. I stretch up my face and I see the stars against the black sky. I find a pond. I walk across it.

I stand in the middle of the amphitheatre; I dance to the music in my ears. I walk up the stairs of the theatre, I look at the stage. To my right, there’s an artificial white light, reflecting on natural green leaves. I think of taking a photograph, I do not. I make my way back to my room and I say to myself, “the world is beautiful.”

The world is beautiful in its sounds. The sounds of the waves. The sound of the city beneath the traffic. The sound of breath. The sound of love hidden in mom’s daily repetitions. The sound of the wind brushing through the tree. The sound of the night’s silence.

The world is beautiful in its objects. The rice cooker. The small book of poetry. The train railing. The fallen leaf; the white light. The pebble and the sand. The reflection in the pond, the path to the classroom. The neon lights and the sea.

The world is beautiful in that which is not me. The couple kissing under the tree. The dog unconcerned with me. The autowalla driving in the night. The sunkissed smile on your crush’s face. The stars and the moon living in eternity, ever so close and forever so far.

The world is beautiful in beginnings and ends. The birth of new life. The beginning of a score. The first day of the new year. First love and the first kiss. The break of dawn and the last glimmer of twilight. The pain of heartbreak, the end of a book. The last day of the last year on earth. Death.

If only we can suspend ourselves. If only we can hear the movements under the marble. If only we can listen to our heart’s constant beat and its limitless desires. If only we can enter our own minds only to escape our bodies. If only we can reach out to the stars while lying down on the cold stone floor. If only we can say not me, not today. Then, maybe then, we can say, “It’s beautiful here too.”