'The dam is a disaster waiting to happen'

Marine engineer turned filmmaker Sohan Roy speaks of his multi-crore Indo-Hollywood 3D venture
Your film Dam999 revolves around the breaking of a real dam and also implies an emotional one. How did you come across such an idea?
As a person living in Kochi, under the constant fear of the Mullaperiyar Dam, it felt quite natural for me to use the dam as a symbolic representation of suppressed feelings.Tell us about the navarasa or what is known as the nine concepts of love that has been employed in the film.
Number nine plays an important role in DAM999. The movie can be viewed from nine angles. To portray the nine characters in DAM999, I have used the concept of navarasa as a static emotion in each character to represent each rasa. The natysastra clearly specifies the nine static emotions and a separate colour for each rasa to match its mood. I used this element to mould the characters and to design their costumes. The third nine of 999 is all about 9 forms of lost love. In fact, DAM999 is a voyage through the nine seas of lost love. The pain of lost love will always be there till your last breath if the love is true.
How have you brought in the Mullaperiyar Dam controversy?
My research for the story started from Mullaperiyar and ended at 1975 Banqiao Dam disaster in China where more than 2,50,000 lives perished in a single day to make it the largest manmade disaster that the human race has ever witnessed. Both Mullaperiyar and Banqiao are of almost the same capacities, but Mullaperiyar is 7 times more dangerous than Banqiao due to the geographical features of its location. It is also an earthquake prone area subjected to constant landslides. A new dam here will not solve the issue either. This is what I'm trying to express through the climax of the movie.
What are you trying to say through the film?
Destiny is decided by our own Karma. We are facing the issues of ‘global warming’ because of our own doings. Is it the fate of modern civilization to be washed out in DAM disasters? This movie spreads across a message that there will be more than 40,000 huge outdated dams across the world by 2020. So act fast. Don’t leave everything to destiny.