Nepal is a landlocked country high up in the Himalayas. It is home to Mount Everest and 30 million gods. Throughout history the kings of Nepal have ruled alongside three Kumaris - virgins worshipped as living goddesses.
These young girls, judged by senior Buddhist priests to be incarnations of the goddess Taleja until they begin menstruating, have always legitimised the king's rule. The girls live in a secluded world of ritual devotion.
But it's 2005 and Maoist rebels have blockaded the Kathmandu valley intent on killing the king, and anarchy is breaking out on the streets of Bhaktapur. These angry men are calling for the deposed Nepali government to stand up to the king. They demand a republic and a democracy and an end to the king's theft of public money.
At first the Kumari seems oblivious. In one of the most memorable scenes, she returns to the sanctity of her palace from the outside, where protesters are chanting 'King Thief', and sits back down on her throne. Banknotes waft about her feet - offerings from devotees - and she yawns languorously.
But as violence breaks out directly below her palace and a shoot-on-sight curfew is imposed, the minute adjustments to the Kumari's jewellery by her servants begin to look futile and dangerously out of step with what's happening in the real world.
Sajani, aged 10, is the youngest of the three Nepali Kumaris. Worshipped as a living incarnation of Taleja, the goddess of creation and destruction, she plays with other children in a walled courtyard, stopping to come back indoors where she sits on her throne to have tikka painted onto her forehead while devotees sprinkle water and present her with symbolic gifts of flowers and rice.
The girl-goddess is not always willing: 'Sometimes I don't feel like going on my throne when my mummy asks me. I've got to get up so early,' she says.
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