Water - Deepa Mehta

The third installment of Deepa Mehta’s Trilogy, after Fire and Earth, was her conflict ridden film Water. The film begins with an absurd belief quoted from the Sacred Hindu Texts – “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.” You read the quote in the first few seconds of the film and know for certain that you’re in for a few hours of powerful voicing...

Water, the third installment of Deepa Mehta’s Trilogy, that includes  Fire and Earth, was one conflict ridden film. The film as we all know, was plagued with problems. The place chosen for shooting was Varanasi – a city where widow houses still exist. But Varanasi, although good proof of Mehta’s film subject, played bad buddy. On the very first day of the movie’s shooting, a crowd of about 12,000 people hounded the film’s shooting location, burned the director’s effigy and threw the film’s sets into the river. Mehta was understandably furious and waited a whole five years before her anger was mitigated. The film’s cast and crew were then taken to Sri Lanka, and Varanasi was recreated to fulfill the director’s heartfelt project and expose some of the county’s ugly realities. Water, the movie that was ripped apart by sections of Indian politicians and commoners, six years before its reincarnation, was nominated for the Academy Awards in the year 2005 – a flattering compensation for all the trouble.

Set in the late1930’s of India, the film traces the story of Chuyia (played charmingly by the young Sri Lankan girl, Sarla), a sprouting young eight year old girl who becomes a widow of an elderly man about her father’s age. Long before she understands her plight, Chuyia is made to sit beside the corpse of her husband and her head is ritualistically shaved. She is then dropped off at the ashram for Hindu widows, to live the rest of her life in renouncement. The ashram, near the river Ganges, is a melancholy place with old widows who wear one ragged sari, eat one meal a day, and beg by the temple to sustain their livelihood. Madhumati, bulky and domineering is the ashram’s sovereign ruler – only to be equaled in power by the receptive and strong willed Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), who lives her life in peaceful detachment. Far away from the old widows, in a modest room, stays Kalyani, (Lisa Ray) the young and beautiful widow who befriends and takes care of Chuyia. Kalyani gets the benefit of keeping her beauty for an irredeemable price – she has to support the lives of the ashram’s elderly inmates by resorting to the ill clutches of prostitution. Away from the cloak of her dark nights, during the day, Kalyani prays to Krishna, plays with Chuyia and meets Narayan, (John Abraham) a law student and an idealistic follower of Gandhi. Kalyani’s child-like purity and beauty attracts the love of Narayan, who as a firm believer of progressive ideas is uncompromising with his love for her. But Kalyani’s new found gleam of life and hope - a disdainful shift from the unbending religious beliefs of  the widows creates havoc in the ashram. The orthodox nature of society eventually grinds her down to the doomed end that is engraved in the code of unspoken commandments for all such widows.

Will the little Chuyia too succumb to the same deplorable fate of widowhood?

Mehta’s period film gives us constant references on widowhood, those which are depictive of Indian ideologies, from the Dharamshastras. The film begins with an absurd belief quoted from the Sacred Hindu Texts – “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,” - and you already know for certain that you’re in for a few hours of powerful voicing against Mehta's subject matter. The conditions that Mehta talks about are predominantly those of pre-independence. Post independence, the country prohibited child marriage by law, and that led to a substantial reduction of the suffering of widowed women in India. But present numbers are still confounding. There are about 34 million widows in India according to the 2001 Census, and many continue to live by the same economic, cultural and social deprivation that was subscribed for these women 2000 years ago. Restrictive dress codes, exclusion from social life and sexual exploitation are still the order of the day for these women. Hardly a surprise that the film was harassed with protests and agitations before its release.

Deepa Mehta's Water is a social protest that is visually beautiful and emotionally troubling. With the wonderful landscapes of Sri Lanka for Varanasi, the filming is picture perfect – to an extent where the beauty of the locales actually seem unrealistic for its place and time. Even the protagonists in the form of Lisa Ray and John Abraham come through as too dazzling to be true. But that is hardly the focus of the film – what the director’s trying to tell is not simply a story to sell with her lush sets and sensational star cast. It’s a serious story that brims with intelligence and sensitivity, and progresses in a way that is quietly devastating. As for the performances, they are subdued and successful - special mention to be made of Seema Biswas as Shakuntala (remember Khamoshi and Bandit Queen?). A defining actress of her generation, she’s simply terrific as she easily navigates the role of a stoic yet sensitive woman, and gives the movie a large chunk of its substance.

For all its plus points, Water is worth a solid recommendation. If you’re curious about the Indian Territory and want a peek into its culture, Water will give you justifiably horrific images that could be misleading – India has an abundance of beauty and logically established morals after all too. But the movie’s theme is a real nonetheless. Within an India that is conflicting between traditional and modern attitudes today, this movie is an important one. It stands as a  strong catalyst that’s needed to drive away some of the country’s existing evils, and Deepa Mehta’s fearless touch is one that makes it all the more effective.

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