With Chloe Zhao's Nomadland, meditations on grief, rootlessness and belonging, and carrying the home within

Movies and shows, old and new, have helped us to live vicariously through them. They have allowed us to travel far and wide at a time borders are shut and people are restricted to homes. In our new column What’s In A Setting, we explore the inseparable association of a story with its setting, how the location complements the narrative, and how these cultural windows to the world have helped broaden our imagination. * “ Home, is it just a word? / Or is it something you carry within you?” - Nomadland, 2020 It was the roaring Oscar buzz and my desperation to distract myself that led to me finding Chloe Zhao’s meditative gem, Nomadland . I had exhausted pretty much all other options. _Friends_ or Brooklyn 99 reruns were no longer engaging enough, hopeful romantic dramas lulled me to sleep. Horrors and crime thrillers were more often than not, predictable. [caption id=“attachment_9576251” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Frances McDormand in a still from Nomadland[/caption] Friends and acquaintances showered praises on MacDormand’s craft. Still others resonated with Zhao’s vision. But despite a generous exposure to feedbacks, I did not quite know what to expect from the film, least of all catharsis. The year 2020 was particularly challenging for most. Other than grappling with the seismic rupture of the pandemic, we lost our families, friends, neighbours, screen idols. I lost my closest confidante, my aunt, in September after four-and-a-half years of rigorous battle with cancer. I rejoined office a day after she died. During off-hours, I watched one movie after another, only taking breaks for bathroom visitations or steadfastly scrolling through Instagram. I spared no moment for unpurposeful listlessness, lest the floodgates swing open to unfathomable pain. But movie characters are acting companions. They are as long as the film is. Soon enough, my acute loneliness caught up, and I couldn’t escape the searing void my aunt had left. **** They (not sure who they are, in all honesty) say home is where the heart is. Only, home may not always be what you suspect it to be. I think it’s where one can be their most vulnerable and chafed self with utmost abandon. Home is what laps one up in comfort, no questions asked. For some, it can be a person, a canine or feline companion. For others, it can be the vast nothingness. And in the infinite nothingness of Nomadland, I felt I belonged. [caption id=“attachment_9878401” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  In the vast nothingness of Nomadland, I felt I belonged[/caption] Here was the story of Fran (Frances McDormand), a recently-widowed woman who lost her home after the factory her husband worked at was shuttered, along with an entire town in Nevada, following the 2008 economic crash. Still reeling from the passing of her husband, Fern hits the dusty highway in a second-hand camper van. She has no family for company, but the bone china cutlery her father gifted her. Her sorrows and loneliness are unarticulated in words. She warms her can of soup alone inside her van, and sorts her sugar beets with no one to record her days now. Death is the ultimate derailment of our proud plans, of all the what-ifs we tuck inside our bucket lists in the hubris of a false sense of control. It throws you off of the roadmap you carefully stitch for yourself. Thus, one finds Fern journeying through  endless space of flat sand and bare rock, the Badlands of South Dakota, the lashing Pacific waves, the unnamed ravines and cliffs, perhaps to reconcile with the fact that her best-laid plans will remain unfulfilled. [caption id=“attachment_9878371” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Fern journeys through endless spaces[/caption]

Even when she returns to Empire, her now-extinct hometown, she flits around aimlessly amid the fossils of the past — empty, decrepit houses, and overgrown lawns. Her own home, with dirty brown cartons stacked in a corner, emptied out shelves, and creaking wood floors, stares lifelessly back at her. The view from the balcony her husband so cherished stood audaciously, mocking the transience of life; the brick-and-mortar relic reminded her of the time she once held close to her heart. **** Be it the sweeping panoramic portrait of the rugged American West landscape, or the boundless expanses of a desert land, filmmakers often resort to open spaces to juxtapose the excesses of the landscape with the slightness of the human form. I vaguely remember watching Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor (2006) on TV as a precocious 15-year-old. But when I revisited it a few years ago, Meera’s (Ayesha Takia) isolation felt nauseating. Her home is a prison, where she dutifully fulfils the roles of a young widow. Outside home, she finds solace in a standalone temple in the middle of the expansive desert. Meera is insignificant — her petite frame in black attire, perched on the stairs of the temple, is consumed by the mounds of golden sand. But it is the same, unforgiving landscape that shields her from the nosy, critical outsiders. This hideout becomes her cocoon of comfort, and eventually, her access to the world beyond debilitating social mores. Similarly, it is in the relentless journeys across the country where Veera (Alia Bhatt) finds her home in Imtiaz Ali’s Highway (2014). [caption id=“attachment_9878361” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Ayesha Takia and Gul Panag in Dor[/caption] **** [caption id=“attachment_9878411” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  The magic hour[/caption] Not just the space, Nomadland lies beyond the confines of time too. Seasons trickle over into one another, as the golden embers of the magic hour cascade the landscape of nothingness. Pianist Ludovico Einaudi, who composed the background score, revealed he wanted to “create a project that was divided into seven days, because every day there is a new version of the piece that comes back with a different form and a different interpretation.” He likened the music to walking, a routine event that is a little different each day.

My routine was similar. Each corner of my house was heady with her soft smell, each moment reminding me of what I have lost. For all life. Every evening after office, I’d take any direction I wanted to, never as keen to explore as to run away. My everywhere land was my city under lockdown, where masks obscured familiar faces and spaces were abandoned in favour of the security of the homes.

My escapades were almost always marked by a desire to abandon the familiar. I’d roam around inside centrally air-conditioned malls, the freezing temperature and the technicolour lights numbing my senses to a wistful reverie. But didn’t Fern do the same? Didn’t she too want to forget, to disappear? Or did she?

**** Fern’s stint at the Amazon warehouse is where she has her first brush with humankind. Her work hours are marked by clinical jobs interspersed with gentle hey-s and nods she doles out to her colleagues. I hadn’t had such a luck. Rather, I was resolute in limiting my social interactions to a bare minimum. I shunned away friends and well-wishers, too scared of affection pulverizing my steely conviction to not wither away. [caption id=“attachment_9878391” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Fern’s first brush with humankind takes place inside a lifeless, clinical Amazon warehouse[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9878381” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Strangers bonded over a sense of shared grief[/caption] When Fern and her new friends huddled around a crackling campfire, the warm halo gently caressing their creased skin and shrunken eyes, I wondered how these strangers bonded over a shared sense of loss and grief. It’s not like I wasn’t aware of the universality of loss, I had read far too many personal accounts on social media to be so naïve. Yet it was the reassurance from the group of strangers to another stranger I needed to realise, after all, I wasn’t all so alone. When Fern wonders if she might’ve “spent too much of her life… remembering,” her friend reassures it’s the memories that we carry along in our travails, hoping we’d meet our loved ones one day down the road.

**** In a parallel universe, I think we’d still be planning that trip to Rajasthan or debating whether a vacation in Himachal Pradesh is more feasible. I’d curl up against her as she’d desperately fan herself, indicating it is way too sultry for physical affection. I’d scoff, and proceed to squeeze her even harder. For now, my trips are limited by practical constraints. I still aimlessly dawdle along the curved walker’s path at Dhakuria Lake. But my friends insist on tagging along, and I have warmed up to holding onto them a little tighter. I still have a long way to go in romanticising long walks, but the sweltering heat does not seem to bother me anymore. Read more from the What’s in a Setting series here .