New Delhi, March 17 (IANS) "Twinkle twinkle little star..." the popular children's ditty aptly describes the new child actors who are shining on filmdom's firmament. The recent one to join the list is Sri Lankan actor Sarala.

In Deepa Mehta's Oscar-nominated "Water" she is simply sensational. As eight-year-old child widow Chuhiya, Sarala outshines all the other actors by infusing her role with a gritty reality. It's almost impossible to think of "Water" without her.

"She's an amazingly natural talent and has truly become the heroine of 'Water'," Mehta was quoted as saying about Sarala who is pitted against veterans like Manorama, Seema Biswas and Rahguveer Yadav.

In the film about the plight of widows in pre-independent India, Chuhiya's husband dies when she is just a child. According to tradition-bound Hindu social norms, she has to spend the rest of her life in a widow's ashram to atone for the sins that caused her husband's untimely death. When she is dumped to cope up with the dark and depressing surroundings of the ashram, your heart goes out to the little girl.

For a nine-year-old with no acting experience, it certainly seems a mammoth task to do the complex role. But for this little prima donna from Sri Lanka, it was a cakewalk.

According to Mehta, the girl had never acted before and doesn't understand Hindi or English. But in the film not even once does she give the impression that she is talking in an alien language - she gives the right expressions and emotions while mouthing all her dialogues.

The amazing part is that Sarala learnt each line of her dialogue in a word-by-word phonetic process and communicated with Mehta through hand gestures with the help of an interpreter.