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Earthly Dispossessions

By Angilee Shah
Contributing Writer

Never one to hold back critique, Deepa Mehta brings the heat with Heaven on Earth. Her target: domestic violence in the South Asian diaspora.

Preity Zinta's blockbuster hits include Koi...Mil Gaya, in which a magical alien allows her to live happily ever after with hunky Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan, and Kal Ho Naa Ho, where she plays a girl-next-door with two very eligible suitors in megastars Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan. In Bollywood, she's the darling with dimples.

So the first time Zinta is slapped across the face by her husband in Deepa Mehta's newest socially-conscious film, Heaven on Earth, is a pretty jarring experience.

The film is a focused look at one woman's journey from India to Canada in an arranged marriage that turns out to be a domestic violence nightmare. It follows the story of Chand, who leaves her happy-go-lucky childhood for life in a small apartment with a large family in a suburb of Toronto. Mehta, who both directed and wrote the screenplay for Heaven on Earth, touches on many sore spots for the South Asian diaspora -- the pitfalls of arranged marriages, the cruelty of mother-in-laws, and the second-class citizenship of women in the family. To be sure, they are important topics to bring to light, especially because they are still taboo subjects for too many people. They are even more important to discuss because the incidence of domestic violence in the U.S. and Canada is staggering. By the most conservative estimates, one in ten women are victims of abuse.

Each character in the family suffers from problems that stem from cruel traditions, which in turn help them to accept the cruelty Chanda faces each day. Chand's husband, Rocky (Vansh Bardwaj), is crippled because, as the only son, he bears responsibility for the entire family. His new wife becomes a new burden to him. Chand's sister-in-law Aman (Ramanjit Kaur) has lost authority in her own life because her husband is unemployed, and the couple and their two children remain in Rocky's house. Even Aman's young son is cruel to Chand because he has watched the family approve of the violence. Chand's mother-in-law (Balinder Johal) has assumed power over the family and encourages the beatings and put-downs to secure her own position. Add to these ills the pressures of being an immigrant and not having a support network, and the experiences of being a newlywed in a new country quickly become fraught with danger and helplessness.

But advocates like Sadeqa Siddiqui have a different perspective on Heaven on Earth's depiction of domestic violence. "Working here for 27 years, I have seen how strongly women have come out of these situations," she explained. Siddiqui is a coordinator for the South Asian Women's Community Center in Montréal, an organization that deals directly with battered women, and while she says that Chand is not an unrealistic character, she is a problematic representation for Western audiences who might know very little about Indian immigrant communities.

While Heaven and Earth does well in its portrayal of the horrors of family violence, it does not offer much by way of redemption for its lead character. It does not allow Chand to be anyone but a battered woman, imprisoned by her culture and her isolation as a bride sent blindly to Canada. The ounce of comfort and strength the film does provide comes from the story's retreat into mythology and hallucinations of a version of her violent husband who is gentle and kind. As a film solely about one woman's descent, it succeeds. Unfortunately, it is impossible to watch Heaven and Earth as just a portrait of one woman. South Asian women have come much further than the film saves space to show; even Zinta herself stepped up to defend women's rights in her 2004 BBC columns.

But if anything, the film might be of real value to families in South Asia thinking of arranging a marriage to strangers abroad for their daughters. "Please don't send your daughter blindly. And when things go wrong, please support her," Siddiqui says. As a comment on ills of South Asian's globalized culture, the film presents important and often taboo subjects, but falls short for its violent refusal of nuance.


To learn more about Heaven and Earth, click here.

For a list of resources for South Asian women living abroad, visit Sawnet's directory here.
 

Date Posted: 1/23/2009