Let me guess, you couldn't find a real journalist. Jain's questions are meant to flatter Mehta not really question her film-making ethos. Guess she is more accustomed to interviewing Nicole Richies and Paris Hiltons. Not to mention editorializing ("Happily the BJP was voted out"?) Hullo? Ever heard of journalistic objectivity? But then again that isn't part of the American education system, I guess.

I would be interested in watching how well Water does in India. So far, Earth has been her biggest hit there and more so for Aamir Khan's stellar presence. And even that can't be counted as a "hit" in any real terms.

Besides, there have been a number of films and books about the issues Mehta so consciously packages for Western audiences. Yes there were a lot of emotions churned up about the filming back in 2000. I, like many others, thought and still think she has the right to make all the cinema she wants and do so freely. But there were enough people who are thoroughly sick of being packaged and sold as usual in easily digestible doses abroad.

She does package India well - and stereotypically - for the West. And never bothers to stop and consider - in her self-righteousness - how that stereotype perpetuates all that so many of us have fought for and are still fighting for!

Mehta's isn't cross-over cinema (whatever that may mean). This is cinema with nominally brown people made for and sold to a white audience, playing up the images they already hold, and pandering to their political, ideological, social and cultural stereotypes. It doesn't challenge any of the patronising views that West holds of India - either racially or sexually, and recycles the usual Western left-liberal, leftist feminist discourse about us, without bothering to consider how hideously "Eurocentric" (in its broad sense) that is...but hey, why should that surprise any of us. Thats what sells in the West, and she will get the requisite money-back, the festivals circuit and a few hundred white feminists and "cultural studies" academics writing books on it. And lo and behold, this shall be the "true" representation of us - better so because its been apparently made by a nominally Indian woman, regardless of how lactified her consciousness may be, or how epiduralized her sense of self.

As a citizen of the country, and child of Benaras, I remember feeling disgusted by her sanctimonious statements then, just as I am now. She wanted to package my city for sale to the tourists and she did it! And as an Indian woman, I get to now walk down Western city streets and meet more people who tell me how terribly oppressed I am. Come live my life for a while - fight for the real issues on the streets of Benaras along with the derided "housewives and prostitutes" including AIDS-prevention and education for the prostitutes' children, and housewives' right to refusing unsafe sex. And THEN come up with your sanctimonious bullshit.

Really Ms. Mehta, stop deluding yourself! Were we "ignorant natives" upset about caste - so how come Benaras loves the new film with the eponymous title? If we easily deluded housewives and prostitutes were led astray, how come we exercise our franchise to vote the new dispensation in to office in 2003? We were upset at the way you walked rough-shod over us in Benaras, and have in your long career packaged and sold the Indian woman. You may show us in the gutter and not the RSS pedestal, but you still don't bother talking to any of us before you package and sell our image.

And spare us the bullshit. The West may buy this junk - they can't cope with the India from back home, unsanitized, unabashed and clamorous anyway - but we dont!

A typical Banarasi

PS: What happened to the plagiarism suit brought up against the script for this movie by the Bengali novelist? Or do copyright privileges only apply to the Western world?

I have one question for Banarasi: In India, do widow's ashrams exist where the women are forced to lead ascetic lives and unable to remarry?

Banarsi,

Your criticism of Deepa Mehta's movie packaging India poorly for the consum ption of Western audience is at once valid and invalid.

From the perspective of an Indian, it is obvious a westerner can never ever grasp us fully. We are vast and complex, unlike anything they have seen here in history. We have myriads of strengths and weaknesses in our culture. Don't you think that it is impossible to ever distill something out of our culture and identify it as our essence ?

Now, having grown up in India and known and experienced a culture that is immensely oppressive of the feminine, despite its glorification in dieties and election of Gandhi womenm I think that Deepa Mehta's addressing a small slice of a gigantic hive of issues is significant. Yes, there are books written about them and studies done about them but movies as a media of mass communication are far more accessible to a wider section of society.

To everyone that condemns Deepa Mehta's attempt to raise feminist questions in the complex society of India, I suggest they attempt something like that with the same passion, sensitivity and lyricism she brings before criticizing such attempts. It is true that movies can rarely solve real life issues and they shouldn't attempt to. But raising issues effectively is an important task and she manages to do that.

Indians are too sensitive to criticism. We don't have a sense of humor and our identities are so poorly formed that pretty much any hint of chastisation nastily wounds our collective narcissism. How the hell is the behemoth social structure ever going to change and evolve into a more "modern" India ? I don't know that the west is a great example to model modern India after but somehow or the other India needs to rattle its social machinery and remove anachronistic inhuman practices. But then again that is true of so many places in the world. So, let Deepa Mehta talk..Maybe someone will care and do something different..

Desi Gal