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.'"