Stunning and Powerful
By Sangeeta Sibal

Water is the final film in Deepa Mehta's trilogy of the elements. This powerful film is set in an ashram on the banks of the Ganga against the socio-political backdrop of Gandhi's rise to the political landscape. According to ancient Hindu Laws of Manu, a living widow is to be sent to an ashram to live the rest of her life in depraved austerity, alienated from the rest of society and is expected to dress only in a white Sari and serve as a caretaker of temples in order to curb her desires.

A widow should be long suffering until death, self-restrained and chaste.
A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven.
A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal.

The Laws of Manu
Chapter 5 verse 156-161
Dharamshastras
(Sacred Hind texts)

In the opening scene of the film, we see the innocent and precocious eight-year-old Chuyia (Sarala) completely unaware that all is about to change in her world as her much older husband is dying. After his death, she’s taken to an ashram which is inhabited by women of all ages whose days are spent in desolation and misery. Water chronicles the lives of these women in their confinement.

“Profoundly Moving Drama… Deeply Satisfying”
- VARIETY

Chuiya enters the ashram as a feisty eight year old oblivious to the reality that surrounds her and livens it up with her innocence and precociousness. Here, she meets the reserved and beautiful Kalyani (Lisa Ray) and the devout and stoic Shakuntala (Seema Biswas). While Shakuntala is a middle-aged widow who is still struggling with the burden of widow-hood, Kalyani is a free-spirited young woman with a perceptible youthful streak. Both of them feel compassionately towards Chuiya and become her guardian and friend respectively.

Though a Hindu myself, Hindu widows remained a bit of an anomaly to me until I started researching them for Water, the third film in my elemental trilogy of Fire and Earth. Their plight moved me enormously. These women lived out their lives as prescribed by a religious text that was nearly two thousand years old.
- Deepa Mehta

Madhumati (Manorma), is the Brahmin widow who runs the house (an allusion to the repressive caste system). Assisted by a eunuch (Raghuvir Yadav), Madhumati operates a prostitution ring that effectively keeps the ashram from destitution. Since Kalyani is sought after by the clients, she, unlike the others, is allowed to keep her long hair.

Deepa Mehta's Water is a magnificent film. The ensemble acting of the women in the widows' hostel is exceptional: intimate, painful, wounded, jaundiced, corrupted, tender, tough. The fluid lyricism of the camera provides an unsettling contrast to the arid difficulties of the characters' lives. The film has serious, challenging things to say about the crushing of women by atrophied religious and social dogmas, but, to its great credit, it tells its story from inside its characters, rounding out the human drama of their lives, and unforgettably touching the heart.
- Salman Rushdie

The turning point in the film is when Narayan (John Abraham), a progressive disciple of Gandhi, and Kalyani meet. Kalyani aided by Chuyia, begins to entertain the possibilities of escaping the ashram and expresses her desire to remarry. On hearing this, an enraged Madhumati rushes into Kalyani’s room and cuts off her hair instantly violating her beauty to seemingly lessen her appeal to Narayan. The irony is palpable in that these women are prohibited from legal marital relationships but are made available as prostitutes to the higher caste elite members of the community.

There are some images that become indelible in our minds. One such image that has stayed with me for 10 years is that of a Hindu widow in the Holy Indian city of Varanasi. Bent like a shrimp, her body wizened with age, white hair shaved close to her scalp, she scampered on all fours, furiously looking for something she had lost on the steps of the Ganges. Her distress was visible as she searched amidst the early morning throng of pilgrims. She was paid scant attention to, not even when she sat down to cry, unsuccessful in her attempt to find whatever she had lost.

It was this image of a widow, sitting on her haunches, arms outstretched on her knees, head bowed down in defeat that became imprinted in my mind and led to the idea of a screenplay which was to become the film Water 10 years later.
- Deepa Mehta

The film is aided by brilliant performances, potent symbolism and sometimes stark and at other times colorful imagery, which resonates against patriarchy and deftly interlaces Gandhi as a symbol of change. It explores the reverberations in Chuyia’s spirit as it is exposed to the depravity, corruption and power dynamics that exist in this in this apparently sacred ashram. Water underlines the concept of mutability which contrasts severely with the unyielding principles behind the ashram.

EGO Magazine recommends Water by Deepa Mehta.

Images Courtesy the film Water