The Lake, the Mother and the Actress Who Refused to Hold Back

MOIRANG (Manipur): There are roles an actor performs, and there are roles an actor enters. For Merina Laishangbam, this one seems to belong to the latter.

After appearing in more than 40 commercial films, Merina had begun longing for something different—a character without the familiar gloss of commercial cinema, a story in which a woman’s strength is not announced but slowly revealed, almost like a flame protected from the wind.

Image: Merina looking sophisticatedly sizzling.

That opportunity came with two-time National Award-winning filmmaker Haorongbam Maipaksana’s latest feature, a film yet to be release. And for Merina, the journey towards it began not in front of the camera, but on the waters of Loktak.

She plays a mother left alone with her two children after her husband disappears following a trip to Churachandpur district to visit a sick uncle in the troubled aftermath of May 3, 2023. With no certainty about his return and two young lives depending upon her, she turns to the lake for livelihood, fishing and selling whatever its waters yield.

But the lake in the film is more than a landscape. It is livelihood, witness and perhaps even a silent companion to a woman fighting to keep her little family afloat.

The role also carries an intimate echo of Merina’s own childhood. She grew up near Loktak Lake at Moirang College Gate with her younger sister and brother, raised by her single mother, Laishangbam Ongbi Sanatombi Devi. The fictional mother she plays, therefore, was not entirely unfamiliar territory. There was something of her own childhood in the character’s struggle, something of the woman who had raised her.

Perhaps that is why Merina chose not merely to portray the woman, but to surrender herself to her.

Initially approached over the phone by former Film Forum Manipur chairman, Laimayum Surjakanta Singh, Merina subsequently met Maipaksana and began preparing for the role. What followed was an unusually demanding apprenticeship.

Image: Merina at her effortless, casual best.

Image: Merina in her glamourous avatar

For 97 consecutive days, from six in the morning until five in the evening, she remained on a canoe on Loktak Lake, learning to row. The challenge was formidable enough: Merina did not know how to swim.

Then Maipaksana raised the bar.

One morning, he told her that rowing alone would not do. She had to learn to fish in the traditional manner—with a fishing net hung from a bamboo pole while standing precariously at the head of a canoe, as generations of Manipuri fisherwomen have done.

For an actress accustomed to the controlled environment of commercial filmmaking, this was a different kind of cinema. There were no shortcuts. The lake had to be learnt. The body had to be trained. The sun had to be endured.

After 97 days, Merina’s face and exposed skin were badly sunburnt. Her complexion had darkened so dramatically that the burnt skin could be peeled away by hand. She worried about losing the glow she had carefully preserved over the years. Yet there was another emotion beneath the worry: satisfaction. The sun was doing for her what make-up could not. It was making Merina disappear and the woman of the film emerge.

The film, however, is not simply a tale of a mother struggling to feed her children. There are shadows around her, too. The vulnerability of a woman left without a husband exposes her to forces that begin to encroach upon her small world. A local goon becomes an unwelcome presence, and what begins as a story of survival gradually gathers a darker, more unsettling tension.

But to say more would be to give away what the filmmaker appears to have carefully reserved for the audience.

Image: Merina played 'Leipaklei' perfectly in the film 'Ema' by Haorongbam Maipaksana

Image: Stills from EMA (Phumdi dwellers ordered to vacant via a government order in the film as Leipaklei looks on)

Image: Haorongbam Maipaksana directing his crew of IMA in the Loktak Lake

What can be said is that the film does not seem interested in presenting its protagonist merely as a victim of circumstance. Somewhere along her journey, something within the woman begins to stir. And by the time the story reaches its final stretch, the audience may find itself looking at her—and at the meaning of female power—with different eyes.

For Merina, some of the film’s most demanding moments were emotional rather than physical. A scene involving her daughter pushed her to the edge of her own feelings. To summon the grief of a mother, she imagined the girl as her beloved niece, the daughter of her younger sister.

Another moment moved her for an entirely different reason. While her character is at a local market, she hears the voice of Mangi, played by eminent Sumang Leela artiste Oinam Prafullo, singing the haunting song, “Taibang Keithel karakpada, Punshi lalonba Lakpada, Sellep Mangdana halledo….” from somewhere behind her. Prafullo plays a mentally disturbed Sumang Leela artiste who has been left without work, as performances have come to a standstill amid the unrest. Merina recalls that the song touched her so deeply that she could not hold back her tears.

It is perhaps such moments that distinguish Maipaksana’s film from the commercial cinema Merina has known for much of her career. Here, the drama seems to live not only in what happens, but in what remains unsaid.

Merina’s own journey in the arts began with modelling. In 2005, she was the second runner-up in the Miss Orange Queen contest. She became known for her casual style—torn jeans, shirts and sunglasses—and subsequently built a career through more than four dozen commercial productions.

Image: When Leipaklei is setting her fish net with her two children, the preying Angousana disturbs her peace

Image: Protective Leipaklei is alert when she suspects an intruder at night when she is having dinner with her two children

But this film has altered her sense of where she wants to go next.

“I want to give more preference to art films,” she says, speaking of the road ahead.

That road is already being built at home through her Loktak Art Academy, a YouTube initiative based at her residence in Moirang. Around 100 artists, working in phases, have been associated with the platform. Merina has cinematographed, edited, directed and produced web series and music video singles under its banner, including Piktru Vs Allergy, which ran for two seasons, and Lamhenbi Angang, whose first season has already been released while the second is in production.

Her ambition now extends beyond acting—to nurturing young artists who are searching for a place to begin.

Perhaps that is why this film feels like more than another entry in Merina’s filmography. It marks a crossing—from the familiar waters of commercial cinema into something deeper and less predictable.

She entered Loktak unable to swim.

She came out knowing how to row, how to fish, how to endure the sun—and, perhaps most importantly, how far an actress can go when she finally finds the role she has been waiting for.

What happens to the woman she plays when the world around her pushes her too far is something the lake is still keeping to itself for now.

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