With Cargo , Arati Kadav has boldly gone where few women have gone before – she has written and directed a science-fiction film set in spac...
With Cargo, Arati Kadav has boldly gone where few women have gone before – she has written and directed a science-fiction film set in space.
Cargo takes place sometime in the future, and stars Vikrant Massey and Shweta Tripathi as astronauts on board one of the spaceships in a series named Pushkar, after the mythical vehicle of the gods. Prahastha (Massey) has been on Pushkar 634A for decades, and if his age doesn’t show, it’s because he is an anthropomorphised demon and a beneficiary of a “Demon-Sapien Peace Treaty”.
Prahastha is an employee of Post-Death Transition Services, a corporatised version of Yama, the god of death. The recently departed are the “cargo” of the title, who are wooshed into the spacecraft right after their demise and wooshed away once an ‘extraction process’ is completed. Prahastha has been at it for years, and when his genial boss Nitigya (Nandu Madhav) sends over an assistant, Yuvishka (Tripathi), Prahastha finds that he has to share his workspace and his life with his younger and more ebullient colleague.
Impermanence is among the themes explored by the film, Kadav told Scroll.in. “Life is like a set of revolving doors – you have had your time in the world and then it is...
