Shooting Water is Devyani Saltzman’s memoirs about her experiences during the shooting of her mother Deepa Mehta’s film Water. The title is a bit misleading because the book is not so much about the shooting of the film (even though it is also about that) but about her struggle to grow up in two worlds after the divorce of her parents. Her relationship with her mother becomes perennially haunted by her decision to live with her father. Devyani, named after the character played by Suchitra Sen in Asit Sen’s Mamta, comes to India to work on her mother’s production where, apart from gaining work experience she hopes to heal her troubled relationship with her mother under the grim shadow of her childhood choice.
October 2006, volume 30, No 10