A home run

Lakshmipriya Devi

- Karishma Upadhyay

How do you reckon with a home that is both beautiful and violent, steeped in love and loss? Even as a child, Devi navigated Manipur through stories. Now, one of her own is making ripples in the world. Boong, her directorial debut, has been nominated for a BAFTA. Since it was made, members of her crew, including her 12-year-old lead actor's family, have had to move to relief camps. Seeing Kukis and Meiteis work together, and watch this film about our state together, 'that has been the greatest reward,' Devi says

As a child of 10, Lakshmipriya Devi remembers her heart pounding every time there was a knock on the front door.

"We didn't know if the person on the other side was someone trying to hide from the army or someone coming to extort and threaten us," she says. The memory remains so visceral that, decades later, her voice shakes when she talks about it.

Not wanting this to be the only world their child knew, Devi's parents admitted her to a boarding school in New Delhi, far from Imphal, and from the insurgency, ethnic violence and State overreach that still plague their beloved Manipur.

By the time she left, though, Devi - who would never really live in Manipur again - was taking something indelible with her: stories, of a land of misty mountains and ancient legends, folk tales and family lore.

Most of the family stories centred on a great-grandfather who disappeared as a young man. "There are all these fables about what might have happened to him," says Devi, 52.

Too many families are forced to build such lore. But stories of the life her great-grandfather might be living "in exile" fuelled her imagination. "I would often think about what it would be like to go looking for him," she says.

These legends, distilled and reshaped, make their way into her debut film, Boong.