Real life dramas lend themselves easily and successfully to reel life representations. It was once such news report that outraged Santoshi into analyzing lives of four oppressed women. The report was about a 42-year-old Dalit woman who was punished most heinously as her son had eloped with the girl from the higher caste Yadav family. After being kept locked up in a room for seven days without food and water she was raped and burnt.

A Dalit woman (Rekha) who educates her son in the face of feudal opposition, an alcoholic woman (Madhuri Dixit) who is also an unwed mother, a woman who opts out of marriage (Manisha Koirala) and a woman who is the victim of dowry demands (Mahima). Rajkumar Santoshi's latest film is about these four women. They dare to challenge patriarchal norms; dare to stand up for their rights; be realized as independent individuals with a choice and the courage to subvert the system. The choice of characters cuts across class and caste, focusing on the same issue under different circumstances.

Recalling Sita's test of chastity by fire, the film makes more than a passing reference to it. The four central characters are named Ramdulaari, Janaki, Vaidehi and Maithili, which are the various names that Sita is called by.

There have been radical films about women's' empowerment but a mainstream filmmaker seldom displays such a passionate interest in women's issues. From V Shantaram to Prakash Jha, Tanuja Chandra and Kalpana Lajmi, filmmakers have dealt with the issue in their own ways and often with a fair degree of success, but commercial Hindi cinema has never seen thematically connected multiple narratives like Lajja seems to offer.

With films revolutionary in treatment and content hitting the market lately, the mood is upbeat and expectations from Lajja are high. Lajja releases this Friday and Santoshi's craft and skill at telling four simultaneous stories will soon be open to evaluation. Santoshi's earlier films like Damini, Chinagate, Pukar have always had something interesting to offer. Damini stands out in that respect. The story was woven around a young girl who, after discovering that her brother-in-law has raped the domestic help, decides to take up the cause of the violated woman. Chinagate had a woman after her father's dacoit-killer. The only justification provided for Mamta Kulkarni's forgettable presence in the film was to get all the able old men together for the sheer delight of experimentation with form.

Madhuri Dixit in Pukar had interesting aspects to her character. She accidently trades defence secrets in a misplaced attempt to win Anil Kapoor's undying love. In all these films, the women may have made a difficult choice but the retribution comes via men. Men are both aggressors and protectors. In a highly dramatic scene in Damini, a hunted Meenakshi Sheshadri runs into a muscular Sunny Deol who only needs to flex his biceps to scare the goons. That scene onwards Sunny Deol's Dhai Kilo ka Haath played the protagonist of the film.

Jackie Shroff, Ajay Devgan and Anil Kapoor also star in Lajja and if Santoshi does not digress from his trademark style, they will play saviors to the women. Urmila is said to be doing an item-dance in the film in the true Santoshi tradition. While Urmila's Chamma Chamma will take years to erase from public memory this is a good time to recall Aamir Khan's item-dance for Damini. Aishwarya is also said to be doing a guest appearance in Lajja. With such a huge star cast and the pressure to be just and fair to all the stars, it will be interesting to see how Santoshi experiments with the structure of the narrative.