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I fell for Deepa Mehta after I saw Fire. I have lived in Lajpat Nagar for over a dozen years now but Ms Mehta was the first to tell me about the possibility of my landlady, Mrs Chadha, being a lesbian. But more than that, I admired her for naming the film's two protagonists, Radha and Sita. It showed her natural nose (I am not talking about the one on her face) for controversy while feigning both injury and innocence. Much like a footballer in the English Premier League.
Indeed, what could have been more innocent and justifiable than two physically and emotionally rejected middle-class women getting into a same sex relationship. But indeed, what can be more mischievous than the couple being named after two of the most revered goddesses in the Hindu pantheon,
Radha and Sita. To their credit, the wise censor let the film pass without a single cut. Fire would have passed into the dustbin of history but for the trishul brigade. As the Shiv Sainiks stormed a single theatre in New Delhi (and we thought the virus was Mumbai-centric all along), defending Fire and its director became the secularist' flavour of the week. And Ms Mehta laughed her way to the bank.
 Earth followed. Unfortunately, even the unending lovemaking scene between Rahul Khanna and Nandita Das failed to get the film going. Message: sex helps sell a film but 'a sexy' controversy is better.
The fire over Water needs to seen in this perspective. Surely, the filmmaker was aware of the potential threat from the right-wing Hindu fundamentalists in Varanasi, given the fact that they enjoy the tacit support of the Government's at the Centre and Uttar Pradesh (where the Chief Minister insists on spreading Ram's prakash in Ayodhya in a rather gupta way). Any other filmmaker would have baulked at the prospect of going to the holy city with such a script. On the contrary, Mehta was delighted. So were the pseudo-defenders of faith. In a market-driven and extremely competitive society, both know the value and importance of free publicity. It was a situation tailor-made for two parasites who not only need each other but feed on each other. Hence, all the furore.
Now that the film's shooting has shifted from fundamentalist banks of the Ganga to the more secular shores of Narmada, both Mehta and the lumpens of Varanasi must be smiling in 70 MM. True, Ms Mehta has lost thousands of dollars as the shooting schedule went haywire but also count the costs of publicity all over the world. Imagine being on BBC, CNN and on the front page of the every Indian newspaper for a week. That must be worth millions of dollars.
Perhaps, Ms Mehta got it a little wrong. Water had a far better setting for a same sex relationship than Fire. Imagine shaven headed widows kissing each other on the Ganges! And imagine the posters abroad with the blurb: Water, widows in oriental exotica. Imagine the controversy!
Avijit Ghosh is a Free Thinker
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