SANAA STORY © Amoolya Narayan 2018

The scene opens on the reception (between the main office area and small conference rooms
of the office). A young man and woman cross over from their cubicles (in the main office area)
to one of the conference rooms. He, with his face set, but showing a little bewilderment. She
with her head down, face streaked with tears (little bit of runny kajal) and lots of emotion.
They both get in and immediately she calls her mother (who is screaming from the other end).
The guy is telling her to keep it quiet so that Flora the receptionist will not hear them. She
quietly cuts in to say: “No maa, I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m not going to harm
myself. Vikram is here and he is…- ya he is here. Ok” she hands the phone to the guy who says
“Yes aunty. Ya I had to call you, I was getting very scared hearing her say these things.” She is
leaning against a corner, [Kubrick stare] and lets out one sob.

BACKGROUND: A 28 year old woman, Sana who is living a plush life as a corporate
lawyer in Mumbai faces her truth that she cannot be happy doing this because she
does not care for it and has no passion for it. She is not from Mumbai but from a small
town near Bangalore. She is in a relationship with Vikram, an affectionate, caring guy,
but they both can’t bring themselves to commit. An added layer of complication is the
fact of their drug addiction and she – tired of being unable to control it – decides to
up and quit her entire life there or whatever she wasn’t able to make of it.

Cut to – later that evening. In their friend Pema’s house. Sana is telling Vikram how she
couldn’t help herself back then, in the office. It is now clear that Sana and Vikram are a couple,
who also work together. They are discussing the events of the day and Vikram suggests that
she should quit trying to adjust to a job and a lifestyle that gives her so much evident pain and
discomfort. Sana nods blankly. Looking into the distance. The acceptance of this is giving her
some space to breathe internally. Pema says he agrees with Vikram and cautions her about
the unseen costs and consequences on herself and others of denying the pain and discomfort
any longer. Her gaze sits on Pema, and she smiles tired admiringly that he is always able to
sum up the most important point in the matter without beating around the bush.

BACKGROUND: Pema is Ladakhi, and a friend from college. He is a friend to both,

though closer to Vikram and lives on a slightly different plane. He has grown up with
a self-awareness that clearly contours his identity. He knows where all his lines are
drawn, they are drawn by himself and he flourishes within their bounds. He learns
Hindustani music, is a buddhist and has a boss who is hitting on him and slave-driving
him. He is too proper and dutiful to want to ‘change’ his circumstances, he is happy
with what he has. He treats it as a sort of penance. Seems like he lives on a different
plane because he works hard, is unrelentingly honest and happy for it (to the extent
he may be a little obnoxious), and has noble interests which he works hard at, and is
kind. Sana, Vikram and Pema have dinner at Pema’s house everyday after work
because they share a cook who convinced them to eat at one place so she could cook
at one place.
BACKGROUND: Vikram is a
At the end of dinner that evening, Sana has decided to quit her job.
[Vikram and Sana go back to Vikram’s place and they without speaking make the
arrangements for a half-night of drug indulgence. Taking out the glass slab, the drug packet
and switching off the fan.]
She decides to move back home for some time and recalibrate. One of her best friends (Aditi)
is in Bangalore who graciously offers to let her stay in Bangalore (close enough to ghar ghar
in Mysore but not so close that she can’t live the life she used to back in Mumbai which
includes her smoking and drinking habits – SANS THE DRUGS tho). It is with this Aditi that she
has several conversations that form some of the basis of her coming of age. [they both start
updating each other more regularly of their daily life – sharing stuff that might make the other
happy (Sana sends Aditi a poem she thinks is amazing. Aditi responds perfectly. Just the way
Aditi was supposed to. And just the things that fill the gaps to what Sana was hinting at. A
kind of mutual entwinement in their shared understanding and appreciation of it). [flesh out
the scenes of catching up and mutual love etc between Sana and Aditi. Them trying on each
other’s clothes. Aditi waking Sana (who is a very very deep sleeper) up.]

She also spends a lot of time in Mysore and with her parents and grandmother. She learns to
be at Home again. A daughter. And there are some tight and difficult moments where the
drift between parents and child is painfully stark and moments of reclaiming and resetting
the old relationship into a new paradigm. Like she and her parents mutually encourage each
other to be more mindful of their eating habits and fitness regimens (given that everyone is
older than before, and this is an important way of showing care). Her time away has also
allowed her to expand her concerns beyond the personal and family stuff (sometimes in order
to not deal with the stuff) to the political, philosophical aspects of living. For instance she
warns her parents who have become embarrassingly gullible to scaremongering and fake
news on social media, to fact check and refrain from the mindless hate. Although this is also
something that she is just spouting in an activisty manner because she has just learned it –
from her preferred social media. She has not really exposed herself to the situations in real
life which would require her to take courageous positions – but still it’s a good thing that she
brings it up with the family. It’s some kind of opening up and an infusion of challenge and
nourishment in an environment of love. And the personal is political after all.
Sana has always been interested in acting, and the performing arts. And she decides to pursue
options that fall under that umbrella. Blessed with a good voice and having honed a natural
acting skill – she is able to teach herself voice acting and is able to make some money to keep
things going.
The time away from the fast paced, too-much-all-at-once life of Mumbai allows her to think
about her life, her plans in a measured and honest manner. She knows that she is more at
peace now and that’s due to her considered decision of quitting the corporate law firm job
and lifestyle. She feels also that her boyfriend and she must take it to the next level and get
married – doing long distance for the first time makes her realise how much she misses him
and how much she needs him.
He seems to want this too and appears to have been unable to push this idea past his own
niggling issues because of the drug and his mistrust of her (she had cheated on him before).
Once when they are planning on whatsapp video about their shared future, they are talking
in baby voices – so evidently in love. And he asks her about babies. It’s pretty clear she doesn’t
want them. She wants and is only just starting a new career – and that too at her own pace
which is kinda slow – and a baby would only increase her responsibility manifold. She also
worries about the fact that he is the one who is going to be making more of the money –
probably for a long time in their shared lives – and that would make him the more important
breadwinner and would probably push back her dreams and aspirations because that would
require her to be more available and present for any baby. Also she is a smoker (trying to quit
yada yada) and is worried about the whole process of pregnancy, complications arising from
it. This also forms a big part of the conversations she has with Aditi about motherhood, about
pain, sacrifice, compromise, making shit work (Aditi is married to a guy she dated for a while
in an execution of a well planned life), selfishness, dreams, aspirations. She doesn’t give him
a full or straight answer. She wants to marry him and knowing that he has the right to have
certain expectations from a marriage (he will be bringing more to the table in terms of
financial stability, and in terms of the fact that he has never broken her trust but she has) she
says she will give it a thought.
Aditi one day comes back from an outing with one of her friends distraught and upset and
angry. She has fought with an old friend, perhaps an old flame, whom she and her husband
had gone out for some beers with, who it seems hadn’t dealt cleanly enough with his feelings
for her and had a drunken outburst and she had too much at stake in that moment to deal
with it patiently. His name is Ali. So she is distraught and angry and upset that she might have
lost a friend. And that this is a loss that she will rue but she cannot do anything about. Sana
finds herself being a friend – feeling happy that she has a chance to be a friend and trying her
best to do good and the right thing. Something she feels she didn’t have back in her Mumbai
life. Turns out Sana can communicate with Ali in an empathetic way. They have both had a
weird relationship with the idea of love (with him seeming to fall for committed women and
with her not having a healthy past in terms of commitment) and while she has tried to
overcome it actively by reviewing her actions and owning up to them and trying to show
change, he has been the wronged one (the one who a committed woman cheated with her
husband on but chose her husband over), but only because he was ready to be debased in
order to feel love, and was in a sort of denial about the whole thing.
One of those days when Sana has gone to speak to Ali (fulfilling the role of go-between who
tried goodheartedly to achieve reparations but wasn’t able to), they end up feeling an insane
amount of tension between them and they kiss. She stops things there (how does Ali only find
the committed women??) but she has already crossed a line. To accept the fact of it, and to
still believe in her own ability to change / commit / be true to her partner, requires a kind of
self-acceptance and forgiveness and a tough-cynical nod to her own propensity to transgress,
which is a true coming of age. And while her continued beautiful conversations with Aditi
have a lot to do with it (she can’t reveal the kiss to Aditi because that would betray the fact
that she kissed one of Aditi’s old flames and ex-friend with whom she is no longer on good
terms) this is a journey she has to and has undertaken alone. In that acceptance she also
realises that she can’t dump the unpleasant truth on her boyfriend for him to deal with
(ANOTHER cheating incident when she herself has brought up marriage? He would think.)
Sana has all these thoughts swirling in her head she decides to go out for a walk. She goes for
a long walk to an unfamiliar area and suddenly feels like a smoke. She goes up to a shop and
asks for cigarettes. There’s a lady with a baby and Sana starts to notice babies (with her mind
actively providing maternal instinct fodder) and she plays with the baby. It’s a new change
and she wants to open herself to seeing how feelings of affection towards a baby re-defines
her and moulds her newfound self-accepting and growing personality.
She is just on one side of the shop, but the lady who is on the other side (it is a corner shop)
thinks her baby is missing and raises a cry. There have been some fake whatsapp forwards
about baby snatchers which have led to multiple lynchings. A crowd starts to form and Sana
realizes that they are looking for the baby and tries to return the baby to her mother. But the
mob’s anger has been stirred and now they need a victim, and they attack her, take her to a
more secluded spot and lynch her.