Eyes of Stone (1990)

• 72%
• 1990
• Documentary
• Nilita Vachani

Shanta has been married to NandaLal since the age of 10. She became a mother at the age of 12, and now, at the age of 19 is a mother of two sons. She has been severely ill for five out of her nine years of married life. She is given to raging head-aches, body aches and fevers, a sense of dissociation and disinterest in the world around her. She has been taken to local doctors and shamans, fortified with injections and mantras, but nothing has helped. Her family is convinced that she is possessed: bewitched by the evil gaze of a 'dakan', physically inhabited by a 'bhut'. When the film visits Shanta, she has come to live with her parents and her brother in her native village, Keriya. With considerable expense and difficulty her family arranges weekly pilgrimages to the temple of the Goddess Bhankya Mata in Asind. It is well known that at the court of the Goddess no spirit goes undefeated. The exorcism may last five weeks or seven, but ultimately the evil spirit is forced to leave. Ever since Shanta has begun visiting the goddess, she goes into trance and the spirit speaks, a sure sign that her illness is not an ordinary one. It is now assured that Shanta will be cured. Her truck-driver husband will come to take her home and life will return to 'normal'. In this normalcy lies the key to her possession.