Nepal’s Deepak Rauniyar & Asha Magarati: Pooja, Sir is about ‘South Asian racism & Otherness’

Nepal and India have shared what is known as the Roti-Beti ka Rishta (a relationship of bread and daughter). There is a cord that ties India with its neighbours, not just geographically, culturally, historically and geopolitically, but also in their art. The first Nepali-language movie to be made, DB Pariyar’s Satya Harishchandra, was produced in Kolkata and released in Darjeeling in 1951. The first Nepalese film to be produced in Nepal was Aama (Mother) in 1964.

Nepalese cinema is fairly recent compared to its bigger South Asian neighbour, India. The all-eschewing Bollywood style has had an impact on how films were earlier being made in Nepal, and only in” recent decades has that been changing. The film industry grew rapidly in the 1990s but conflict and insurgency witnessed a fall in cinema-going audiences. That changed with the turn of the millennium. The then highest-grossing Nepalese film Darpan Chhaya was released in 2001. Over the last two decades, Nepalese cinema has also been travelling to global film festivals. Among such filmmakers is Deepak Rauniyar, whose film Highway (2012) was the first Nepalese film to be premiered at a prestigious A-lister film festival, the Berlin International Film Festival. And, since then, Rauniyar’s films have become festival regulars.

The internationally acclaimed Rauniyar and actress Asha Magarati brought their latest film, Pooja, Sir — which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and won the Queer Lion Award — to the recently-concluded 13th Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), where the police procedural was the closing film. “It’s an honour,” says Rauniyar, “because we know DIFF from a long time, and it’s also a festival run by filmmakers (Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam), and to be the closing film of that festival, it feels really good.” In the film, investigative inspector Pooja, a queer person, is tasked with finding two kidnapped boys in a border town, where political unrest and violent protests welcome them. Pooja battles systemic discrimination and everyday misogyny, and with the help of a local Madheshi policewoman (Madheshis are discriminated against in Nepal, often labelled as Indian immigrants), solves the case. But, at a personal cost. Events from southern Nepal unrest during 2015 inform the film. The director and his lead actor, who is also the co-writer and producer of the film and his wife, spoke about their “product of love and toil”, about Nepalese cinema, India-Nepal relation, South Asian racism, gender politics, and a lot more. Excerpts:

Pooja, Sir is about a queer cop amid race/community intolerance. It took you eight years to make this film overcoming financial difficulties and the lead actor Asha Magarati beating cancer. Tell us about the making of the film and what the story is about.

Deepak Rauniyar: So, this is a police thriller as we have dramatised it. Asha plays the role of a queer cop, who has a home where she has to take care of her father and the family. Also, she’s in this masculine department, with 95 percent males, where she needs to fit in. She wants to be like them, succeed there. But even at home, whatever you do, your parents, especially in South Asia, always looks at a daughter as a daughter. The father loves her but he sees her in a way that she should be at home, cook for him, take care of him and not as a police officer who’s going to difficult places solving cases. So, it’s her journey and through her journey, we discover about racism, about colourism, about gender and Otherness. The film itself was inspired by our marriage. She (Asha Magarati) comes from a light-skinned Pahadi ethnicity. And I come from a darker-skin Madheshi ethnicity in Nepal, we are seen as Indian immigrants in Nepal, that’s how people see us. So, for us, even getting basic ID is difficult. And I grew up like that because being the only dark person in the whole classroom and not being able to speak the local language and I’ve always been bullied because of that. And, so, for a long time, we’ve been thinking about doing something about it. But after the 2015 protests, where more than 100 people were killed, and because we come from two different communities, for us it felt like a responsibility that we need to do something about it. And this film came out of that. And, also, because it was inspired by our life, in a way, it came from an outside point of view. So, her point of view in my life, how she experienced my world. The film is structured the same way, although it’s a genre film, it’s a police thriller, like all detective films. It has that structure, it has that thrill, it has that drama. But at the core of the film, as you watch, you understand why these people are angry, why these people are protesting, why people are being killed. You get to know and build that empathy. That’s what we hope from the audience.

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Asha, on the personal front, you have been also fighting a lot of things, including cancer. How challenging has it been for you to do this film?

Asha Magarati: Yeah, it was challenging for me. First of all, we have been through a lot of things, my sickness and everything. But, you know what? All those things gave me the courage, made me stronger than before. I was really fine but there was a little problem. Because of the medicine, my post-reaction surfaced when we were shooting. So, my hormone was changing and a lot many things were happening but, in spite of that, I think, I did a good job (laughs. Looks at Deepak for reassurance. Both laugh).

So, Deepak, Asha is your better half, the lead actor, co-producer as well as the co-writer?

Rauniyar: Yes. We wrote it together because it’s inspired by our life. And its character, Pooja, comes from her life itself. She had a brother who died early on and so she was trying to be that son at her home, but even at home, she had to struggle to make that space for herself. Her parents would be sad, and would cry, that they didn’t have a son to cremate them when they would die. And, so, she knows that Pooja very closely. It’s a lot coming from her life as well.

Asha Magarati in stills from 'Pooja, Sir'.

Could you talk about the Nepali unrest of 2015 which became the backdrop of the film?

Rauniyar: So, around 40 per cent of the population in Nepal are dark-skinned Madheshis who live in a plain strip along the border of India. They speak the languages like Hindi, Maithili, Bhojpuri, because we have an open border with India. People have been coming this side or people going that side and living there. For this population, in Nepal, from very early on, the rules were such that you cannot buy land if you didn’t have a citizenship. So, you were systematically dispensed with. Someone like me, even now after having a national fame and a lot of people knowing me, but even for me to get a small thing done has never been easy. That kind of racism already existed. The country was ruled by certain middle class. At the same time, not all Pahadi have the power. There’s some hill population, upper-caste men especially, who have that power and have been ruling the country for a long time. So, after the civil war, from 1996 to 2006, when hundreds of thousands of Madheshis came on to the streets, demanding federalism, dignity and respect in the new Constitution, they were suppressed. People were killed, protests died. Protests returned again in 2007-08 and again in 2015, the country was closed down for almost six-eight months. Cities were not functioning. People were fighting, several people were killed, including a lot of children, and a lot of policemen also died on the street. So, that, also, in one way, established the identity of Madheshis, people started to know about them. And that build the coldness between these communities. People in Kathmandu would think that because of these Madheshis protesting and India blocking the border, they struggled to basic things like cooking gas and petrol. So, we wanted to make a film about something that news cannot do. To create an experience. A lot of discrimination comes from misunderstanding, not knowing each other. So, our hope is that this film will invite people to come, watch and build empathy. To understand each other little bit more than have till now.

India and Nepal have been strongest neighbours for the longest time. At present, the relations are not that great. How, as an artist, do you address this through your work?

Rauniyar: So, see, politics is in one place and then you have people, this side or that side, we have what you call the Roti-Beti Ka Rishta sort of relationship. So, people have always, from a long, long time, been together. Whether they’ve been married to each other, they have had businesses with each other. Nepalese people would come to hospitals in India or people from India would go to hospitals in Nepal or travel, or for religion. So, that (string) is not broken, that is still very strong.

As an artist, we need to be making work that break the barrier and build a connection. We are glad that (Bollywood filmmaker) Anurag Kashyap came on board as the executive producer. We’ve been struggling for a long time. There’s a big industry here in India as well as an audience. Indian films come to Nepal, but it has been very difficult to distribute our films here in India. There are people who want to watch our film, but we don’t have a medium to show our films, we have not found that channel and are still struggling.

Anurag Kashyap has onboarded Nepalese film 'Pooja, Sir' as its Executive Producer.

What did Anurag Kashyap say after watching your film?

Rauniyar: He really liked it. I think he had even posted online about it. I’ve been inspired by his work. And he wanted to come on board and support the film (Pooja, Sir).

Nepali cinema is fairly young. Could you talk about its evolution.

Rauniyar: It is young. We started to make films around 65 years ago, but it’s been only like now what, 30-35 years, since 1990, that we’ve been making films openly. So, it’s not been so long. And a lot of people who came to Nepal to make a film were trained in Bollywood. So, our structural base and style was also very Bollywood like, such as dances, fight sequences, going to different places to shoot your song. But that’s been changing.

A poster of Highway (2012), a film by Nepal's Deepak Rauniyar.

Was your film Highway (2012) the first Nepalese film to go on the global festival circuit?

Rauniyar: Yes, that was the first film to do a lot of festival run. We have had two other feature films earlier, Mukundo (Mask of Desire, 2000, directed by Tsering Rhitar Sherpa) and Numafung (2001, directed by Nabin Subba) that have done some kind of festival run and have had that exposure. And Nabin and Tsering are [my] seniors who started making films. I’ve learnt a lot from them. They kind of started a [film] movement in Nepal. That inspired us as well. But we got lucky with Highway that we had Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival) premiere. We had not had that kind of A-list festival premiere before and that kind of opened up opportunities. And now we’re happy that we have our films premiere in, practically, every festival. The last two years have been really good. Pooja, Sir is our fourth feature in continuous basis that is doing A-list festival run. [Min Bahadur Bham’s] Shambhala (2024, Nepal’s Oscar 2025 entry) is screening here (DIFF). Last year, we also had Gaun Aayeko Bato/A Road to a Village (by Nabin Subba) or The Red Suitcase (by Fidel Devkota). And we have, at least, three-four films that will come out immediately. So, we’ve been happy about that progress.

Do you have a favourite Bollywood film?

Rauniyar: (Laughs) Not right now. But I like Dil Chahta Hai (2001) a lot, Farhan Akhtar’s first film, I loved his work. And there have been other films, like Dibakar (Banerjee’s) Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008) and Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006). There have been great films like that.

Any Bollywood actor you want to work with in the future?

Rauniyar: There are a lot. But it’s hard to access them in some way. There are people whom I don’t know closely. We were talking about working with Tannishtha Chatterjee for this film. Our schedule didn’t work out. She had liked the script, she wanted to come on board, but we could not shoot earlier because she (Asha) got diagnosed and we had to focus on her treatment. And later, when we were shooting, she (Tannishtha) couldn’t come to Nepal to shoot at the time. But we are now in conversation with multiple actors and we have a new film that starts in Nepal and comes to Gujarat and goes to London. We’ve been talking to actors and producers here, to structure it in a way so that we can bring the talent from India as well. We won’t be able to shoot next year, but in two years, we are hoping to be able to shoot it.