Water hangs fire in Varanasi as Mehta awaits Jaitley
CHITRA SUBRAMANYAM

NEW DELHI, FEB 1: ``Hang in there. I'll be there tomorrow,'' is what director Deepa Mehta tells her crew in Varanasi over the phone. If all had gone according to schedule, this would have been the third day of shooting for Water, the last in her element trilogy.

Now, however, she was in the Capital to meet Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley, who returned from Dubai late in the night, keeping an anxious Mehta on tenterhooks all day. All of Tuesday, her cast and crew was in Varanasi, ``talking to the people at the local level''.

According to her, there aren't only vandals protesting against the script of Water in the holy city. ``We also have some support, especially from a women's group in Varanasi, which has called this a `chauvinistic attack','' says Mehta. But support also comes from home, as Mehta's mother, who has also read the script and calls it ``extremely progressive'', says: ``Kuch karna hoga (We have to do something).''

Sitting in her Panchsheel residence, Mehta explains thatWater is based in the 1930s in an ashram for widows. ``An eight-year-old child widow comes to stay at the ashram. She is still a child and has no clue about why her head's been shaven, or why she isn't allowed to laugh and then she rebels. "Her innocence comes across when she asks Shakuntala (Shabana Azmi's character), another widow, where `the house of men widows is'. Shakuntala's character, though, has a lot of faith, and starts questioning the entire system. There's a love affair between Narayan, an idealistic nationalist, and Das's character.

"But nowhere has the word caste been mentioned. Water is basically on the awakening of the women's liberation movement in the Thirties.''

Prior to the shooting, Mehta met Alok Kumar, the District Magistrate of Varanasi, who gave her the permission required for shooting in the city. Three days before the shooting commenced, she went to meet him, as ``I had heard some rumblings. Then he told me that an Uttar Pradesh minister had said that I was involved in someforeign exchange irregularities and that the script smeared the name of Kashi as it was about an incestuous relationship between a Brahmin widow and her father-in-law.'' However, on showing the required papers, he gave her the go-ahead.

A week later, however, Deepa Mehta was asked to give the groups protesting against the film a copy of her script. ``Why should I give them the script of my film? Why should they decide whether I should be given the permission to shoot, especially when the Central Government has approved my script?'' Mehta says.

``I asked them to discuss it with me on a common platform. But they pulled the rug from below, just before the shooting began. I have never heard of pre-censorship. Let the film be made and then let it go before the Censor Board, whatever its contents may be. At least have faith in the Government.''Besides the vandalism on the sets of Water in Varanasi, its producers Ajay Virmani and David Hamilton are also losing a lot of money. In fact, according to Mehta, Virmanihas lost nearly Rs 2.5 crore, but ``everyone, including the crew, have decided to defer their salaries until the matter is resolved''.

But despite the fact that Water has run into trouble even before its shooting commenced, Mehta is determined not to resort to a different location, like other filmmakers in the past. She laughs and says: ``Why should I change the location, when the film is set in Varanasi? It is not just any city anywhere in the world. If I wanted to, I could have shot Water at Film City in Hyderabad. At least Mr Naidu would have protected us.''

Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.