/> Even as Mira Nair's literary adaptation Shantaram lies abandoned, at least for the time being, her immediate NRI-ival Deepa Mehta is on to her biggest project yet.

Moving diametrically and dramatically away from the hardcore Indianness of her last two films the Oscar-nominated Water(in Hindi) and the ready-for-release Heaven On Earth (in Punjabi) Deepa now moves into the veiled burqa-clad iron-curtain society of Tehran.

Over 100 weeks in the New York Times bestseller and translated into 32 languages Reading Lolita In Tehran is the story of the literature teacher Nafisi who holds classes in ultra-conservative Tehran with seven of best students discussing Western literature that is forbidden in their country.

A hugely progressive novel about women's rights and feminist issues in a fundamentalist Islamic culture this time again Deepa is all set to raise fudmentalists' hackles as she did when she made tried to make Water in Varanasi ten years ago.

The film had to be finally shot in Sri Lanka. It's doubtful if Deepa's celluloid rendering of Reading Lolita In Tehran will be allowed to be shot on actual location.

But ask Deepa if she cares. "One has to be fearless and true to one's vision. Otherwise there's no point in writing books or making films.

I don't think cinema is ONLY about entertainment, though I've made soufflé films like Bollywood/Hollywood. But to me cinema is about our collective conscience. When I read Reading Lolita In Tehran I knew this was something I had to do."

She's currently in her farm-house on the outskirts of Toronto planning and scripting what promises to be Deepa Mehta's most rousing work to date.

Deepa's current project Heaven On Earth is also about female repression, though set in the progressive metropolitan milieu of Toronto. Water was about the widows of Varanasi. And Reading Lolita .... is about the claustrophobia behind the veil.

Says Deepa, "Issues specially to do with women's rights, seem to creep into my cinema. I can't help it. I guess they always will be there. Domestic violence and wife-beating are not peculiar to any one Indian community. During my research I came across women from Mexico, Canada, and many Latin American countries who are victims of spousal abuse. Likewise Reading Lolita goes far beyond concerns of one community of people. I'm fascinated by the universality of the individual experience."