Desi Making Waves

By Ambika Behal

Deepa Mehta - Passion in Filmmaking

On the eve of the U.S. release of her new film, Water, independent filmmaker Deepa Mehta, director of a series of critically acclaimed films that include Fire, Earth and Bollywood Hollywood, sat down with ABCDlady and chatted about the art of telling a story.

How did you get involved in the filmmaking scene?
My father was a film distributor in Punjab and I grew up with Hindi films, and fell in love with them. After receiving my bachelor’s and master’s degree in Philosophy from Delhi University, I worked part-time at a place called Cinematic Workshop in Delhi. There I learned how to do sound, camera work, edit and just loved it from there…I’ve been making feature films for the last 12 years.

You have made a well-known trilogy: Fire, Earth and Water—which is continuing a hugely successful run in Canada. Do you have any particular reason why you’ve named three of your films after elements?

These are elements that nurture us. Without them we can’t survive—I mean they’re life-giving elements, and yet they’re extremely destructive, so it’s their contradictory nature that is reflected in the films.

Are you going to make films for the last two elements?
No. I always wanted to make a trilogy… I don’t want to make a film called Air or Wind. So nebulous...I mean what does it evoke?

Your latest film, Water, features a good deal of Gandhian philosophy. I know that India nowadays has become so militaristic that Gandhi is not as politically correct as he used to be. How did you feel about using Gandhi as a character?
Whether it was politically correct or not has never bothered me in my life. Gandhi is a person I have always admired greatly. I think besides being instrumental in getting us independence from the British and the way he got it, I really admire him. He was one person who was always exploring his own weaknesses and never said he was a “Mahatma” (great one) or a perfect man—and that for me is a person who is near perfect—who can actually talk about his weaknesses the way he did.

My father grew up in Lahore. My father’s younger brothers were very involved in the Jan Sangh aspect [also known as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh party] which later became the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party, one of India’s largest political-nationalistic parties] of the freedom movement. They felt violence was really the answer and they felt quite antagonistic towards Gandhi speaking about non-violence. But that’s their prerogative. What Gandhi did, it wasn’t about Hindus or Muslims for him, it was about humanity. In fact he was a man before his times—and there are a lot of people who, especially in the Punjab, felt very strongly. And also something I’ve learned is that everyone’s entitled to their outlook. I don’t have to agree. But I can disagree, and I do!

Water, a film about the plight of widowed women in India, starring Indian actor John Abraham and model Lisa Ray, faced a highly contentious time in its making.
We started making Water four years ago in Varanasi. The government of India checked the script out, said they liked it and said to go ahead. However, the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—a conservative, right wing nationalistic movement in India], shut us down after pre-production filming, saying the film was anti-Hindu. It took four years to resurrect and we finally did shoot it in Sri Lanka. Water is about the flow of life. It is an impassioned film for a world that is increasingly tolerant…You have to have the ability to feel passion to relate to Water.

How do you decide what film you are going to make next?
I hardly do anybody else’s work. I need full control over the script. The script is a very important part of the film; it’s the blueprint on which the film is made. So to do something that belongs to somebody else and of course is important to them—my role as a director would only be an interpretation of what they wanted to see, so my version can’t be a hundred percent—and I feel I’m not comfortable doing that. Though, I have done it before. [Metha’s 1998 Film, Earth was based on the novel Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa.]

Either it can be an image or somebody says a certain thing, or I’m listening to a dialogue or it might be something I might have read. But mostly it’s about what I’m curious about. So whatever arouses my curiosity at a particular time is whatever I do the film on because I feel passionately about it. And I generally feel very passionate about something that evokes my curiosity.

What is your next project?
It’s a film called Exclusion. We start shooting at the end of the year. It’s based on a historical thing that happened in 1914 in Canada when a group of Indians…about 370 who were Sikhs actually, from the Punjab, and were part of [a] movement for independence in 1914 from the British nationalists…were being persecuted in India so they decided to seek refuge in Canada.

I think they [Desis] are really lucky if they want to be filmmakers especially, or if they want to be storytellers, because they have two worlds they can draw from. So I really encourage them to stop beating their chests and asking “Who am I, what am I, I’m lost.” You have two identities, and that’s an amazing resource for stories—and you can’t do this kind of work if you feel sorry for yourself.

They rented a cargo ship from India and went across the Pacific and anchored outside Vancouver. Once they got there, the Canadian government wouldn’t let them in because they were scared of a brown invasion—basically it was a [socio-]economic reason; the labor unions were terrified that the workforce might put to shame the white workforce. What ensued was a legal battle for about two months where the local Indians chipped together their savings and hired an amazing British lawyer to fight the case. These guys couldn’t even get off their ship; they weren’t allowed off the boat. And there were two women and two children. And they lost the battle. They went back to India. The minute they landed in India the British opened fire on them, killing about 90 of them and wounding the rest. One of them escaped and actually went back to Canada and assassinated the immigration lawyer who was largely responsible for them being sent back, so it’s an important story.

For me, its something I read about and I said “Oh my God! How come I don’t know about it?” And of course I don’t know about it because very few people know about it—the First World War broke out and it’s one of those incidents that got shoved to the side. So I got intensely curious about it and I read more about it and the more I read about it, the more passionately I feel about it because it shows how racism comes about. It isn’t really about the color of your skin. Ninety percent is about economics.

When will this film be completed?
It takes about 18 months from the minute you start writing the script to actually making the film. I have finished the script, and it’ll take another, about a year I guess.

Do you ever consider how the Desi world perceives you?
No, I don’t think about it. I don’t think about how anybody perceives me. That’s not out of arrogance, it’s more out of, if I start thinking of it, all of us want to be liked. All of us want to get some feedback about what our work means to some people. I think what’s happened to me is I consciously have come to terms with the fact that if I start caring about how people think of me, immediately it would affect my work.

Do you feel a sense of responsibility as a role model for all the young women who admire you for your role as a conduit of social justice issues?
No, I feel no sense of responsibility at all. Because in fact if I started feeling a sense of responsibility, I think in some way it would be that I was superior, and I think that is really a dangerous place to start from.

What advice would you give to young Desi filmmakers just starting out?
It’s a tough business. It’s not very glamorous. But if you feel passionate about it, it’s ultimately really rewarding. But just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Not because you have a message, but because you really want to tell a story. I think that it is important you don’t want to change the world with your films, but you want to tell a story so badly that unless you tell that story you’re going to die. That’s how badly you want to feel about it.

And for the Desis it’s really important for them to feel. Whenever I talk in colleges or universities, whenever I get time, I try to talk to the Desis, because, you know, they’re Desis and so am I! I think they are in a really good position. There should be no question of identity—you know, “Who am I? What am I?”—I think they are really lucky if they want to be filmmakers especially, or if they want to be storytellers, because they have two worlds they can draw from. So I really encourage them to stop beating their chests and asking “Who am I, what am I, I’m lost.” You have two identities, and that’s an amazing resource for stories—and you can’t do this kind of work if you feel sorry for yourself. You really certainly can’t if you’re confused about who you are—you’re both: American and Desi.

Your daughter has recently written a book on her experiences with you and shooting for the film Water. What can you tell me about it?
The book is available now. Her name is Devyani Saltzman and the book is called “Shooting Water.”

Do you want her to follow in your footsteps?
No, God, she follows in her own footsteps and she’s doing it already. She’s her own woman, her own person, that’s what I’m proud of—who wants a stupid clone! She’s much too independent for that.

Ambika Behal is a freelance writer based in Washington D.C.

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