Life of women in India complex, documentary shows

Starring: Pooja Chopra, Prachi Trivedi Directed by: Nisha Pahuja

Parental guidance: PG, violence

Playing at: Cinéma du Parc cinema

What does it mean to be a woman in India? That’s the question that hangs over the deceptively simple documentary The World Before Her, a look at two very different paths that women may take.

Canadian director Nisha Pahuja (Bollywood Bound) shows two extremes of life. At one end is Ruhl Singh, a beautiful young woman, one of 20 contestants in the Miss India beauty pageant. Selfpossessed and confident, she understands the tawdry aspects of the enterprise — the women have Botox injections to make their faces more “harmonious” and acidic compounds brushed on their skin to whiten it. They walk in bikinis and pose for sexy pictures for the newspapers. In one particularly devastating scene, the festival organizer has them bare only their legs so he won’t be distracted by the rest of their bodies: they walk a runway covered in white sacks with holes cut out for their eyes.

A former Miss India winner, Pooja Chopra, is a particular success story: She was raised by a mother who left her husband when he demanded the girl baby be killed (the film says 750,000 female fetuses a year are aborted, and an unknown number of girls are killed at birth.)

At the other extreme is a Durga Vahini camp, part of a right-wing movement of Hindu extremists who blame Muslims and Christians for diluting their religion. There, teenager Prachi Trivedi learns martial arts, riflery, and the teaching that women are born to marry and have children.

Aggressively unglamorous, Prachi thinks of herself as part boy and part girl — but her path to nationalism is also complicated. She is willing to die for “Mother India,” but her father demands that she marry and have children. “The obligation of girls is something God designed,” he says.

The World Before Her moves smoothly back and forth between the two training regimens and Pahuja weaves in scenes of religious fighting throughout the country, as well as attacks by “Hindu Taliban” groups of men who beat women for being in bars, or for drinking alcohol.

By the end of the film, we understand how high the stakes are — both for Ruhl and the others, and the girls in the audience who are fighting to abolish such images. There are no easy answers here, just heartbreak.