FUTURE PROJECTS
"THE SUNRISE"
Background Description
Dhaulagiri, Annapurna, Nilgiri and Muktinath mountain are some of the many important Himalayan ranges lying in the northern part of Nepal. The district of Mustang is located to the north-eastern direction of Dhaulagiri, to the north-west of Annapurna, and to the north of Muktinath Himal, also to the north of Nilgiri. It is situated at altitudes ranging from 2000 to over 7735 meters. There is a beautiful village called Lo-Manthang (Namgyal) within the district of Mustang, which experiences cold all through the year. It is also called the "Walled city" where the king of Mustang lives. The people in that village have preserved their traditional culture and protected their ancient land with utmost love and care despite lack of facilities like roads and bridges and absence of adequate opportunities of food and clothes. The place, thus, has a few shortcoming but its merits are numerous like the clean environment, heavenly bliss, pleasant natural scenes, clean rivers and streams and, above all, the innocent and straightforward honest people.
The inhabitants of Lo-Manthang (Namgyal) depend on agriculture and produce wheat, buckwheat and potato. As their agricultural products are not sufficient enough for their family members all the year round, they keep horses and mules to be hired by traders to carry their goods from place to place through the difficult horse trials in the lower Himalayan region. In the upper Himalayan region too, where no facilities of easy movement exist due to lack of routes and heavy snow, people have yaks for milk, butter, cheese, and other products. They carry their goods in the difficult terrain from one place to the other by employing their yaks.
Most of the people in that part of the country have faith in Buddhism and they follow the tradition of arranged marriage. The society is highly traditional whether in the religious rituals, cultural activities or in social ceremonies and festivals. Therefore, even up to the 21st century these societies in the Himalayan region, have been embracing the custom of polyandry. As they do not want to divide and split whatever combined family property they have among small nuclear members of the family, they prefer to stay in joint or extended families.
Whatever number of brothers a family may have, according to their long-held custom, after the marriage of the eldest of them, his other younger brothers are not permitted to marry, as the wife of the eldest brother is obliged to accept all his younger brothers as her husbands. It doesn't matter if the age difference, between the wife and her young husbands, is 20 to 30 years also.
The society has a firm view that this kind of custom has been as a result of the strong possibility of frequent family quarrels if there were different wives of brothers leading to misunderstanding and strong disagreement in the house and severe division and destruction of property. Therefore, a greater importance is attached to the traditional culture rather than to human rights.
THE END
A Film about Polyandry in the high Himalayan region of Nepal, written by Akash Adhikari. This project is for the International market under the banner of
The Sky Movies Pvt. Ltd.
SYNOPSIS
Most of the people living in the northern Himalayan region of Nepal have their faith in Buddhism. The inhabitants of the area follow agricultural occupation and keep horses, mules and yak and make their living by transporting goods on the backs of these animals. They like to live in joint families to protect and enlarge the combined property without splitting it into tight nuclear units. For this reason, some societies in this region have been practicing polyandry as their traditional way of living.
Dorje Jigme, a man of 51 years, with substantial wealth of several heads of yaks and mules, is well respected in his neighborhood. He gets Sonam, a local girl, married to his sons. Because of the tradition of polyandry, three of Dorje's sons, namely Karma of 29 years, Lakpa of 25 years and Tshering of just 5 years, become Sonam's husbands, except the second son Tashi, who has due to Buddhist custom opted for monkshood. Although Sonam from the bottom of her heart regards the eldest brother karma as her real husband, she has to follow what the social tradition imposed on her and treat all the brothers as her husbands.
Dorje Jigme or the head of the family decides who among the brothers will live for how long at home, who will go to the yak herds up in the mountains and who will drive the mules down the valley or stay away from home, as two husbands are not allowed to be with Sonam at the same time. When the turn of Karma comes to an end he goes out and Sonam is obliged to spend her nights with another husband unwillingly. In a situation like this, children given birth by Sonam will have hard time recognizing their father and distinguishing between father and uncle. Lakpa and Karma often clash and quarrel between themselves on the issue of wife and children.
Suddenly, the village faces an animal epidemic. And in the process of the inhabitants moving out from their village to another with their animals, Karma Sonam's eldest husband, dies in an accident. Karma's dead body is then cut to pieces and offered to eagles and vultures as his last rite according to Buddhist custom. As the time passes, Sonam's children grow, the eldest son being 16 years, and the other children 13, 10 and 7 respectively, along with Tshering, Sonam's youngest husband, who is now a young man of twenty-two. Pema, a teacher at the village school, admires Tshering's talents with his victory in the target hitting competition (the Metha Festival). Pema and Tshering fall in deep love with each other and decide to marry with the consent of Pema's guardians. After some time a horse racing competition (Yarthong) is at hand, but unfortunately the second husband of Sonam also loses his life with a severe fall from the horse. Now the society bent on breaking the would-be wedlock of Tshering and Pema begin to put pressure on Tshering to accept Sonam as his wife. But Tshering refuses to do so, as he likes to live freely with Pema, the girl of his liking, by marrying her. Similarly, Sonam too does not agree to take Tshering, who is 19 years younger and like her son, as her husband. The old people of the society worry that the young persons are destroying the traditional custom.
The film takes a different turn when the youngest husband, whose age is almost sames as her son, chooses to marry a girl of his own choice.
There is a clash between the tradition and modernity.
NOTE: THE SCRIPT OF THE MOVIE "THE SUNRISE" HAS BEEN COMPLETED. THE SUNRISE PROJECT WELCOMES INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL ASSOCIATE PRODUCER AND CO- PRODUCER FOR THE PRODUCTION OF THIS MOVIE.
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