For me, watching Water was not a pleasurable experience. I cringed as soon as the film began, when Manu’s views about the subordinate status of women glared on my television. Thereafter, I bunched up on my couch, simmering in low-level discomfort. I am silly that way; when things on the screen start bothering me, I want to change the channel or head over to the study. Something in me cannot separate the virtual from the real. It’s probably a weakness, but I won’t analyze it too much.
Here’s the thing about Water: It’s the truth.
Set in the 1930s, Water retells the story of a group upper-caste Hindu widows living together in a home euphemistically called an ashram. Many widows, particularly North Indian and Bengali widows, had historically been banished from their husband’s homes. Some, as we all painfully know, were forced to commit sati. On their own, the widows faced destitution and were forced into unsavory activities to support themselves. As Narayana - a lawyer ably played by John Abraham - eloquently avers, Hindu society shunned widows to dispose of a financial burden and justified the act with religion. Starkly put: It was for the money.
The story plumbs the relationships that develop between the women, who live under the tyranny of the imperious trogdolyte Madhumati. It begins with the arrival of Chuiyha, brilliantly played by Sarala, a seven-year old child recently widowed from a decrepit man. Throughout the movie, Chuiyha is an impish reminder of the possibilities of an innocence that cannot exist in the widow’s world.
The set is elegant. Much of the activity is centered on a ghat in a city much like Varanasi. The widows wear white and are shorn of their hair, which in virtually every culture is a principal marker of beauty. Homogenized, desexualized and gutted of their dreams, their desires are relegated to their interiors. They pass their days doing house chores and listening to disquisitions on moksha delivered by a Hindu pandit, though there are times for fun too, like Holi, when the dolorous mood transfigures into a riot of joyous laughter and colors.
One of the women, Kalyani, played by Lisa Ray, is allowed to keep her hair in order to work as a prostitute. She and Narayana improbably meet and fall in love, and despite the remonstrations of his mother, Narayana decides to marry Kalyani. Narayana is a Gandhian idealist, animated both by Gandhi’s Hindu reformist values and - dare I say it? - the western ideals he learned through his education.
Unfortunately, fate denied them their unlikely bliss. One of Kalyani’s customers turns out to be Narayana’s father. Narayana’s father is a reformist too, but like too many others, there is a chasm between his ideals and his actual behavior. When confronted, he tells Narayana that his Brahmin seed purifies those he sleeps with, which disgusts Narayana beyond measure.
Kalyani realizes that however much Narayana may love her - and whatever fortitude Narayana may muster to face his family and society - their lives will be tainted by her relationship with Narayana’s father, and she commits suicide.
Meanwhile, Madhumati lures Chuiyha into prostitution. When another widow discovers this, she rescues her from a devastating fate and sends her off into a new world - a world moulded by Gandhi’s leadership of the independence struggle and where the British government is criminalizing some of Hinduism’s most repugnant social practices.
Satyajit Ray’s benevolent humanism is always a presence in Water. Mehta’s depiction of an aged widow with a fondness for sweets no doubt borrows from Pather Panchali. Mehta is more assertive than Ray in her social criticism, but, to my mind, Water never devolves into a total condemnation of traditional culture. Its more complicated than that, and she knows it.
Thank you, Deepa Mehta, for giving the widows a voice. And the militants were profoundly wrong in turning your film away from India. (Water was filmed in Sri Lanka.) Criticism strengthens a culture and emboldens people to challenge anachronistic norms. More "proud" Hindus who glorify their history and elide its shortcomings should see the truth for what it is; there are many widows who live this way in India today.
Highly recommended.
