Searching for the unknowable Maili Sarkini

Folk singer Sarkini’s voice once echoed in royal courts. Today, she lives on only in faint memories and fading anecdotes.

While history speaks of the past, the lack of it tells about the present. Nepal, too, suffers from a shortage of written history. The country’s past is written not just by the victors, but also reflects the victors. Some from the other side—historically oppressed and marginalised, the defeated ones—appear in the record books; however, they are in vain. Their token representation combines single stories or unidimensional portrayals of their unknown lives. The latter is the case with Maili Sarkini.