Provoked – In prison she found freedom.

Known as The Most Beautiful Woman in the World and named to this year’s Time’s Most Influential People in the World list, Aishwarya Rai has little left to prove. As the Queen of Bollywood movies, she’s slowly making her way to Hollywood, selectively.

In her latest film Provoked, Aishwarya plays Kiranjit Ahluwalia, a battered Punjabi housewife and mother of two, who sets her husband’s feet on fire, ultimately killing him. Set in London in 1984, the film is based on the true life story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia and the road she travels from dazed and vulnerable to empowered and strong.

Kiran was a nineteen-year-old girl living with her domineering sisters and their husbands in a small village in Punjab, India. Kiran’s head is filled with dreams of attending college, traveling and seeing the world… marriage is the last thing on her mind. That is, until Deepak (Naveen Andrews) arrives. He is handsome and charming.

Makeup Artist Motoko

They marry and relocate to Deepak’s home in London. Cut off from her family and friends back home, Kiran suffers 10-years of physical and mental abuse at the hands of the man she loves, until that summer night when she decides to strike back.

Charged with first-degree murder, she is sentenced to life imprisonment, where she befriends her cell-mate, a wealthy white woman Veronica Scott (Miranda Richardson), from whom she learns English. “Ronnie” is also jailed for striking back at her husband.

Her cell mate is so moved by her story that she asks her step-brother Lord Edward Foster (Robbie Coltrane), a highly respected queen’s counsel to file her appeal. Her case comes to the notice of a group of south Asian social workers running a funded organization called Southhall Black Sisters. They bring her plight to the attention of the media by organizing rallies to gather public support.

She is ultimately freed by the judicial system in a landmark case called Regina vs. Ahluwalia, which redefined the word Provocation in the case of battered women. She was reunited with her children and subsequently given an award by the Prime Minister’s wife for her crusade against domestic violence.



After watching Provoked, I realized just how little attention domestic abuse receives in American media today. Maybe it’s because we are a culture in which women have the right and freedom to pursue careers, that a movie like Provoked would be irrelevant? Or maybe we are just so far removed from the realities of other cultures that the mediocre “Americanized” way of living is and will continue to be one of only greed, sex, money or drugs… and the tragedy of domestic abuse particularly in Asian cultures will continue to fly under the radar?

Stay tuned for our upcoming interviews with Karen David, musician and singer of Alive from the movie Provoked and Kiranjit Ahluwalia herself.

Provoked is in Movie theaters now. Provokedthemovie.com