Shekhar says paani, paani re

Shekhar says paani, paani re

The first look of Shekhar Kapur’s Paani has finally been unveiled. The film — a futuristic look at the time when water resources will become a weapon of social and economic control — stars Hrithik Roshan in the lead, and a source says Vivek Oberoi may also be roped in for a part.

Written by DaGambit, the film leaps 35 years into the future, where a city with a population of 20 million people is brought to the brink of the Water Wars — a battle between those who have water and those who do not.

Shekhar says that the theme of Paani was written 12 years ago: “When I was trying to get the funds for Paani, everyone said that I was talking about a fantasy film, that no one would identify with the problem. Today they say I must make the film because it is so relevant.”

The idea came to Shekhar when he saw a line of about 50 women and children standing in the hot sun in Mumbai, each carrying a bucket, waiting for a tap to start releasing water. “I had just come down from a friend’s place in Pali Hill, who made me wait for half an hour while he showered. He lived on the 30th floor, and the slum where there was no water was just below his apartment building. This inequity in the most basic resource necessary for human survival set me thinking and a story developed,” he adds.