Et tu, Deepa Mehta?

According to director Deepa Mehta, Videsh – Heaven on Earth “explores a woman’s hidden power and how she overcomes the brutality of her situation by using mythology and imagination.” This is all very good, especially in light of Mehta’s 2005 project Water that justly attracted critical acclaim from both Indian and western critics. But Videsh falls short of re-creating the Water magic and raises a big question about the sanctity of the director’s motives: How could she blend realism and overused popular myths, and call the concoction a work of cinematic art?

Mehta is not the first director to deal with the subject of domestic battery in an NRI family. Inspired by the true story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, Jag Mundhra’s Provoked (2007) also portrayed the helplessness and plight of a Punjabi girl married to an abusive husband. But a comparison between Provoked and Videsh is unwarranted. While Mundhra handles the delicate theme of domestic violence in an unpretentious and straightforward manner, Mehta loses sight of her muse in the second half of her film and exploits Indian myths about snakes in a hurry to roll the end credits. Thus, Videsh remains a well-meaning but flawed treatment of a very serious subject.

Pretty Punjabi girl Chand (Preity Zinta) arrives in Canada after her marriage to Rocky (Vansh Bhardwaj), whom she meets for the first time at the airport. Upon arrival, Chand undergoes an orientation programme of her new life that demands she cook, wash clothes and take upon herself all other household chores. She’s also required to work as a cleaner of hotel laundry. Soon after, she discovers that Rocky is putty in his mother’s hands and cares little about her happiness. She remains sexually frustrated as her mother-in-law encroaches on their privacy even during their honeymoon days. She’s not allowed to talk to her parents back in India and is often physically assaulted by Rocky at his mother’s slightest provocation.

Desperate for her husband’s love, she confides her plight to a Jamaican co-worker Rosa, who tells her of a magic potion that arouses instant love in the person who drinks it. She gives the potion to her husband, but her plan goes completely awry as he faints after drinking it. Now, the husband begins to suspect her of trying to poison him and abuses her all the more brutally. However, Rosa re-convinces her of the power of the potion and asks her to try it again in a different way. This time, she can’t make her husband drink the magic potion and has to dispose of it in the backyard of their house.

As it turns out, she’s poured the herbal drink on the earthy lair of an Indian cobra (shesh naag).

Enter the snake man. It’s at this point that the film replaces realism with fantasy – “imagination,” in Mehta’s words – and starts working towards a supernatural redress for Chand’s woes. Smitten with Chand, the snake takes Rocky’s form and appears before her as a loving husband, creating a semblance of split personality in Rocky. When things get worse and Chand’s suspected of having an illicit relationship with another man, the snake-turned-Rocky suggests she take a naag pariksha in the presence of Rocky’s family. In the aftermath of the pariksha – which required she put her hand in the burrow of the snake and appear unharmed to give evidence of her innocence – everyone is in awe of Chand. Empowered by the miracle, she now prepares to leave Canada for India.

Some might call Mehta’s film a magic realist take on the issue of domestic violence. But magic realism is a literary convention wherein realism and fantasy inextricably blend. Unfortunately, however, the “fantasy” part of Mehta’s film looks like an arbitrary exploitation of folk beliefs; while the first half of Videsh contains realistic – often graphic – depictions of violence, the second half is an enactment of the folktales Chand heard from her mother. In fact, the apparently creative black-and-white takes that seem to foreground Chand’s extraordinary imagination do not help either. The audience are hard put to understand the import of the scenes that are meant to build up to the romance-with-the-serpent episodes.

Videsh, however, does one thing admirable. It shows that even Preity Zinta can act. Chand’s transformation from a lively Ludhiana girl to a tortured wife is smooth, testifying to Preity’s hitherto-unseen acting skills. As Chand’s abusive husband Rocky and the loving snake man, Vansh Bhardwaj is also commendable. Considering the little screen space accorded them, the rest of the cast give an okay performance.

Thus, Deepa Mehta’s ambitious exploration of “a woman’s hidden power” remains unsuccessful because the mythology she uses to redeem her protagonist doesn’t dovetail with the format of her otherwise realistic canvas.


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