Directed by Nupur Basu
A young Indian woman has to choose-stay with a husband who doesn't want female children, or make it on her own.
Twenty-seven year old Vyjanthi lives in the Indian city of Agra, in the shadow of the Taj Mahal built in honor of a beautiful woman. Already mother to one three-year old girl, when she became pregnant again her husband and in-laws forced her to have a scan to determine the sex of the foetus. Told she was carrying a girl, they tried to pressure her to have an abortion, and after a major argument she fled to her parents' home. But she felt bad, went back to her husband, got pregnant again, and the same thing happened all over again.
Now she's living with her parents, with two young daughters-and undecided whether she can make it on her own, or will have to go back to her husband again. Sex-selective abortion is illegal in India, but so widespread that there are many more boys than girls, especially in India's more prosperous states. Vyjanthi wants to know if things are really as bad for girls in the rest of India as in her own neighborhood. Isn't India now one of the world's booming economies, thanks to its embrace of globalization?
Life takes Vyjanthi on a journey through India, and films as she makes a disturbing discovery. Just because a country's becoming richer, doesn't actually mean life's going to be better for most people. In fact the status of women in India is falling behind that of women in many other countries, even in South Asia, and the newly prosperous middle class are particularly likely to abort female foetuses.
Will Vyjanthi decide that India can offer her and her daughters a fair and prosperous future on their own? Or will she decide that India is no country for young girls, and go back to her husband?
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