Ishanou (1990)

The Chosen One - English

A small happy family, somewhere in the Manipur valley. A husband, wife and little girl, under the caring and protective authority of market women, breaks up when Tampha, the young wife, is possessed by the divinity of the mysterious Maibi phenomenon and goes through a series of violent fits of vision and trance till she runs away from home in frantic nocturnal quest of her Maibi Guru to seek initiation into the sect of the chosen. Magic and mystery break upon the mundane world of buying and selling and common rituals like that of a young girl's ears being pierced and the buying of a secondhand scooter and a promotion in office bringing into play the world of the Maobis, with their exquisite ritual singing and dancing and worship and mythmaking. But behind the colourful spectacle of traditional Manipuri Lai Haraoba, into which Tampha almost loses herself in enraptured adsorption, there lurks the pain of a mother who can no longer nurture a child who grows into a Stanger. The film closes on that image of estrangement that almost stifles the sheer grandeur and glory of the ritual festival.

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