/> The welters of fundamentalism during Water forgotten, Deepa Mehta is all set to return to India to shoot her first Punjabi film.

If all goes well a major chunk of her start-to-finish quickie Heaven On Earth about a battered Punjabi wife in Toronto, will be shot in Ludhiana.

"No it's not Provoked, please!" screams Deepa Mehta indignantly from her fertile farm in the suburbs of Toronto, when she announces her decision to film the life of true-life Tronto-based Punjabi battered wife Aman Deep.

Provoked last year featured Aishwarya Rai as the London battered wife Kiranjit Ahluwalia. Deepa Mehta's film entitled Heaven On Earth to be shot in Punjabi, chronicles the life of another victim of domestic violence, this one in Toronto.

Explains Deepa, "Just as now two love stories are the same, no two instances of domestic violence can be the same. I had filmed Aman Deep's harrowing story in a documentary last year.

Her story is the story of so many immigrant wives who suffer domestic indignity in an alien land and culture with no family or friends to support them.

In the documentary I had got the children of battered wives to interview with their mothers on webcams. If I had done it I'd have never asked questions like, 'Mom,how did it feel when Dad hit you on your stomach when you were expecting me?'

The film will be a synthesis of the very real and the surreal.

Says Deepa, "Last year I watched this hugely fascinating play Naag Mandala by Girish Karnad where a tortured woman withdraws into a fantasy world and sees her tormentor as a snake. My film will incorporate the fantasy elements from Girish's play. But finally it would be the wife Aman Deep called Chand in my film, and her story."

The real- life wife who was a close part of Deepa's documentary will be collaborating on the film. "But she won't play the lead. I've already thought of the Punjabi Bollywood actress whom I want for the part."

An NRI theatre actor Vrajendra, who has never done cinema before, will play the husband. Shooting for Heaven On Earth begins on 20 October in Toronto.

Why Punjabi? "Because that's the language to which the film belongs. If Water could be accepted worldwide in Hindi why not Heaven On Earth in Punjabi? My international distributors seem very happy."

So does Deepa.