'I was nau00efve about abuse'

Deepa Mehta says her film Videsh, about a battered housewife played by Preity Zinta, was a learning experience

WHEN Deepa Mehta, the Canada-based director of the Fire, Earth, Water trilogy, was doing a documentary on immigrant women and abuse, she had an epiphany. "I've always been attracted to stories I didn't know enough about. I'm an intensely curious person, so to satisfy that, I make a film on the subject and learn more about it."

Seated in the lounge of a suburban luxury hotel, Deepa leans forward and makes the candid admission that before making Heaven On Earth (titled Videsh in Hindi), she was nau00efve, even slightly silly about abuse. Put it down to no close encounters with abuse Deepa says that strangely, no one amongst her family or friends has had an abusive relationship.

Her film revolves around Chand (Preity Zinta), a woman trapped in an abusive marriage with a Canada-based Indian cab driver Rocky (Vansh Bhardwaj). With no family in Canada and forced to be a slave to her new family's needs, she becomes the brunt of Rocky's frustrations.

"I didn't really understand abuse before I did the documentary," explains Deepa, "I didn't see it as a mental erosion of confidence."

'Why do you stay on?'
Deepa narrates how she was shocked when a few years ago, she bumped into a high-paying lawyer, who said she'd left her husband because he beat the hell out of her. Deepa feels slightly shamed today by her response, "Why did you stay on for so long?"

She says, "You see, I didn't understand the psychology of abuse. Women in different cultures justify it differently. The Spanish believe that violence is the physical extension of passion. Indians feel it's a part of adjustment. And Western women think, 'I can change him.'"

Abuser, a victim
But while most films on abuse have treated the husbands as raving lunatics or vicious beasts, Deepa says it's difficult to swallow that seriously. In her eyes, even the abuser is a victim of circumstances or a history of abuse. And while the filmmaker can never condone abuse ("it's disgusting"), she feels nothing is completely black or white.

Which is why Deepa places Rocky, Chand's husband, in a situation that so many NRIs can identify with. An immigrant cab driver supporting his parents and sister's family in a tiny suburban house and the sole earner to put up the money for his entire family to emigrate to Canada, Rocky is burdened by life.

Deepa says it's a situation that's all too familiar. "My story is also about the immigrant life. Chand's situation is so much worse because she has no support system in Canada all her family is in India. Life in a strange country is very difficult, especially for the working class," explains Deepa, empathy tingeing her husky voice, "They get up at 5 am, go to work in assembly line-like conditions, doing menial jobs. Then they travel back to a small home in an isolated suburb and do all the work there. There's a lot of nostalgia for their lives back home, especially if they have a language problem."

Heaven on earth
Which is why the English title of Videsh, Heaven On Earth, gets a symbolic hue. Chand's father-in-law quotes from the Gurbani, the sacred text of Guru Nanak's, 'It's better to live in hell than in a heaven with no dignity.' It refers here to a bleak, lonely life in an alien country. Deepa points out that if India is truly shining on different levels, its people should stay back here, than opt for a harsh life in an alien nation.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0

Magical roots
In Videsh though, Preity's character finds escape through an unlikely quarter. The inspiration, Deepa narrates, came from months ago when she had the germ of the script in her head and went to a theatre play staged by her friend in Chandigarh. Amazingly, Deepa watched Nagamandalam, Girish Karnad's play that hints at the duality of man in a relationship.

In it, a neglected, battered wife is given a magical root by a wise woman, to be mixed with milk. It's said to make the husband fall deeply in love with his wife. But the wife loses her nerve when the milk turns blood-red and pours it into a king cobra's hole. Of course, the shesh naag drinks it, falls madly in love with the wife and takes the husband's form. The wife is confused it seems as if she's married two men. One who neglects her, the other who makes mad passionate love to her. "I loved the idea," grins Deepa, who incorporated it into her script once Girish gave her the nod. "It just gave Chand a window of opportunity the power of imagination." Obviously, this lends Videsh a mystical air.

Preity impressed
Through it all, Preity remained Deepa's first choice after their endless conversation one awards night in England, when they were placed side by side at the same table. The filmmaker says she was impressed by Preity's social conscience, no-nonsense behaviour and environmental savvy.

"She's a fearless kid. I gave her books, documentaries; she spent time with one woman. I wanted the character to have an interior landscape, not screaming melodrama. She had to be fragile and make that visible," says Deepa, gushing about Preity.

Immigrant tales
And having done with Videsh, Deepa returns to the immigrant experience with Kamagata Maru/Exclusion, starting shooting early next year. Till then, she works on the script of Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children, of which she's ready to talk about only later.

Exclusion was meant to be Deepa's first film with Amitabh Bachchan, but for now, Akshay Kumar is stepping in.

Funnily enough, it's full circle for Deepa and Akshay, who was initially supposed to star in the first, shelved Water.

In all this scrutiny of immigrant life, how does the Canada-based Deepa describe her identity? "I'm really lucky to have two homelands. I've spent my adult life in Canada and feel at home there. I come down here, eat my requisite chaat and go back, but feel completely Indian here. India gives me the richness of the country; it's a hot-bed of ideas. Canada gives me the freedom to express them."u00a0