An instrument of liberation

Bigotry is not innate, it is learned behaviour — that message is front and centre in Akanchha Karki’s short film, Sanai.

The film won best director, best cinematography, best story, best original score, and best picture at Malaysia’s Neo South Independent Film Festival as well as awards at the Nepal Human Rights International Film Festival and the Nepal America International Film Festival. 

Sanai is the story of Rupa and Maya, two teenage Dalit and Brahmin girls form an unconditional friendship within a patriarchal, caste-ridden society. The film starts with Rupa’s father heading to Maya’s house to play the sanai, a musical instrument of the Dalit community at the wedding of Maya’s uncle. 

Dialogue and the behaviour of characters allude to or explicitly exhibit the caste divide. Maya longs to play the sanai, but is yelled at by her mother for ‘almost causing a disaster’ when she tries to reach for one of the instruments.

Rupa’s mother mends clothes for Maya’s mother and sends Rupa to deliver it, but Maya’s mother will only touch the clothing after ‘purifying’ it first.  

However, the two children, brought together by their shared love of music, rebel in their own ways. Rupa throws away the sel roti dropped onto her hand without touching it by Maya’s mother. Maya refuses free candy given to her to persuade her to stay away from Rupa. 

At the wedding, Maya defiantly plays the sanai given to her by Rupa during her uncle’s wedding.

After Maya is told by an adult not to hang out with Rupa due to their caste difference, there is radiant joy when the two girls are told by their teacher that Rupa should ask her mother to sew her the same frock as Maya so that they can look alike.

The following scene, where Maya and Rupa exchange their clothes with Rupa wearing Maya’s prettier outfit, is among the most quietly powerful moments in the film.

Queerness is a subtly recurring motif in the sanai, especially notable during a scene where Maya watches her uncle and his bride dance during their wedding ceremony and imagines herself and Rupa, with matching frocks, in their place. 

“As kids, all they care about is their friendship and their love, but queerness is also an angle in the film,” says director Akanchha Karki, of the Kathmandu theatre, Katha Ghera.

The girls’ shared desire to play the sanai binds them together. And while Rupa’s father and his community are expected to breathe music through their sanai in the life and celebrations of upper-caste communities, they are not allowed to be part of those ceremonies. 

Karki picked sanai out of all the other instruments played by the Dalit community both because it was convenient for the children to carry and because of its unique sound. 

“The sanai produces an achingly beautiful music, which I wanted to bring out for the film,” Karki says. 

At the end, a grown-up Rupa and Maya reunite against a backdrop of sanai players. ‘Did you have to wait long?’ asks Maya, as the two hug one another tightly. ‘Only an eternity,’ Rupa replies with a smile. 

Only an eternity, not just for the two of them to become adults, but to wait for the walls built by the hierarchy of caste, class and exclusion to begin to crumble. 

Says Karki: “It is not only about the physical waiting, but how they had to wait for society to transform.”

Having directed, written, and acted in Nepali theatre herself, Karki found it easy to work with actors. But while theatre is a collaborative effort, working with separate departments in filmmaking was a new experience.

“Everything is not always under your control in filmmaking,” Karki notes. “When I make my next film, I think it is going to be about my own experiences.”