Water: Widows of India
“Your life changes from now on… You are a widow from nowâ€
And the barely ten years old girl looks at her crying father with innocent, detached eyes to ask
“Until when?â€
With a backdrop of the little girl’s old dead husband’s pyre burning, Deepa Mehta traps on camera such and many instances of the inhumane customs that were (and some still are) followed blindly and religiously. The movie opens up with a text from Manu’s 2000 year old ancient script on how the life of a widow is supposed to be lived. Fast forward to a small Indian town in 1938, where the story moves to a “Widow House†where widows from the age of 10 to 90 live together struggling to make ends meet.
Water essentially follows the young girl Chuyia’s (beautifully portrayed by child actor Sarala) journey from her losing her old husband to her entering the Widow house. You get to see the life of Widows through the eyes of little Chuyia.
Mehta maintains a light, soft touch throughout the movie, carefully avoiding the pitfalls of heavy preaching or the typical Bollywood break your tear ducts down routine. Once inside the Widow house you are introduced to its characters in a fleeting or focused manner right from the Madam of the house Madhumati (Manorama) to an old lady on her last legs who longs for a “laddooâ€, Shakuntala (Seema Biswas, powerful performance) a long suffering widow, whose inner strength amazes the priest Sadananda (Kulbhushan Kharbanda).
There is Kalyani (Lisa Ray looking every so Angelic without any makeup), the sole bread earner in the Widow House, while the Gandhian – Narayanan (John Abraham, sensitive performance) is all set to break the shackles of unjust customs to marry Kalyani and who can’t help but laugh when his mother breaks down on hearing that he wants to marry a widow.
Mehta provides a neat peek into the lives of the then widows who were forced to live a secluded life away from the rest of the society (which to a large extent is true even today). The jibes at their dead husbands by the widows or be it the brutally honest opinions of Chuyia, Mehta brings a smile when she captures such hidden light moments which ring very true. Also captured with a sensitive touch is the criss-crossing of morality and immorality, wherein the sisters of the house send one of their own each night, to bed the rich lords across the across the river, inorder to see food on the plate.
The Western audience seems to be the primary target of Water. Though Water isn’t out to change the way things are, it attempts to tell a story on a subject we have long stopped talking about. As the movie ends it shows the statistics of the millions of widows in India, still forced to live the lives like those at the Widow House in water.
You can’t help but wonder after watching Water, on why there was a hue and cry to stop the filming of this movie by the fundamentalist Hindu organizations. Ironically Water ends up showing just that. The underlining, selfish motives of the fundamentalists who want to twist and turn each text in our holy scriptures so that society can run according to how they want it to. It’s tragic to note that for one reason or the other the Militant Hindu organizations blocked the initial filming of this movie in Banaras a few years ago, a movie which opens your eyes to the still existing evils in the nooks and corners of each village and town in India. Mehta had to stop the project and made this movie a few years later after the incident, with a new cast and a new location (Sri Lanka).
Giles Nuttgens cinematography is first rate. His lens would have worked wonders, had this movie been shot in Banaras, making it an important character in the movie.
Of the cast, Seema Biswas stands out. Here is one first rate actress with fiery passion for the art and it reflects right into her work. John Abraham is a surprise. Giving his best delicate touches to the character Narayana, he proves that he can deliver if given a worthy stage with a capable crew standing behind the camera.
But its Kalyani who lingers on in your memory long after the movie ends. Mehta intelligently blankets Lisa Ray’s Hindi diction with shorter dialogues and monosyllables. Ray delivers - with her sad eyes that speak of the inner broken flower that wants to bloom again, or the guilt, shame and anger her eyes project when she recognizes the house where Narayana lives. Bravely discarding all makeup, which most of our Bollywood actress would shriek if asked to, full kudos to Ray for taking on this project. You can’t help but feel for the beautiful lovely angel who sits by the river banks with sad eyes and clipped wings.
A minus. This may not be an earth shattering story, but nevertheless a simple one with a sensitive touch.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:37 am
Oz,
out of curiousity want to know , to which all movies have u given A or A+??
Manoj
March 14th, 2006 at 7:07 am
So far… hmmm… I gave an A to Main Meri Patni Aur Woh. Looking back now I would prefer to change it to an A Minus.
To get an A or A plus from oz would mean this:
oz saw the movie, drove straight to LAX, bought a ticket to Bombay from LA, took flight, landed in Bombay, took taxi, went straight to the the director, script writer and all other technicians homes/offices and fall down and grab their feet and cry and thank them for changing oz’s life by showing them a A plus movie.
Now… oz waiting still waiting…
May 13th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
oz, i couldnt stop laughing at your response to manoj :))
chillipi
May 13th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
From: sulekha.com/blogs
What the filmmaker Deepa Mehta, did to me
by: ixedoc on May 13 2006 10:31AM in Movies
This guy driving me was a lunatic all right. He jumped lanes, squeezed through narrowest of aisles, honk scared every cow and pedestrian – in fact, was berserk. This is Varanasi – the most crowded place I’d seen yet. If had to happen. It did. You see this slogan shouting procession was on the road, and we were also on the road, bad driver versus unruly crowd makes bad result. Screech, and then bang. We had knocked down a placard carrying demonstrator: and that was all it took to attract a swarming horde of raging protesters to our car. They surrounded, bad mouthing and banging the bonnet, hood and roof of the vehicle. All in the much vaunted ‘chaste’ lucknawi Hindi. Very colorful and descriptive – with much refernce to the dubious family tree the occupants of the car come from.
Jaldi, jaldi, close the window. And I do. Crash, a fist breaks through the glass, grabs me by the colar and tie. In a trice I find a knife swishing past my face and as I reflexly protect my face, the sharp edge slices through my wrist and finger. Whoosh, that’s blood, it gushes and wets my shirt and pants - shards and broken pieces of glass is all over me
&%$#@*& Gaadi mein baitke nakra kartha hai kya, saala – uthro, bahar niklo, @#$%&
I was too scared to open my mouth. It was all so quick and unexpected. Being knifed, and all because I was here in this city to conduct an entrance examination at nearby Jamshedpur. I was driving down to Varanasi from where my flight to Delhi would take off, onto Bangalore and then home. I had a briefcase full of answer-cards to be taken safely to my place for evaluation and admission of those with merit and rank. I clutched onto the satchel. Loss would mean chaos.
Chodo, chodo - my driver yells leaning over to protect me, and gets one or two knocks on his shoulders.
Yeh mehmaan hain, Hindi nahi maloom isko.
Tujhe th maloom hai na saala, one retorts and rains another round of blows through my window. I can see my driver bleeding from his nose. More hands thrust themselves. In India, everyone enjoys a free for all. In Madras, I have seen pickpockets being battered: everyone, even the mildest and most henpecked of men, suddenly becomes virile and macho – and contributes his mite to the shower of punches. The word used there is ‘dharama adi’ free hits – who can resist? It wasn’t any different here in Banaras, the very core and hallowed seat of dharma.
A minor distraction for the mob, as soon as they finished with us, they moved on, raising slogans and crying foul.
Spotting a window of escape, the driver raced through a by-lane, driving at break neck pace, his horn continuously blaring like a banshee wail. It took us another hour to reach the airport, all the while, I mopped my cuts and used my handkerchief to dab the driver’s nosebleed and forehead gash. My bifocals had been snatched off and so my Parker pen was missing.
I appeared quite a sight. As it is I am quite a sight, what with my unkempt mane of hair, beard and shabby clothes – but this time, even I knew I looked a royal mess. The airport was teeming with tourists from Japan – I later found out that many Japanese groups pass through Varanasi enroute to Gaya, Sarnath and other holy spots connected with Buddhist history. I was rushed to the ramp, as the gory interruption had got me arrive just in the nick of time for boarding. I heaved a huge sigh of relief as I sank back into the plush seat. I loosened my tie, and took off my soiled coat. I signaled the hostess for water – yes paani, tanda paani, please.
I gulped down two bottles of mineral water, feeling better as the plane taxied. It had been quite a day: my head reeled, the sight of dried brown blood all over my front was unnerving. My breathing now relaxed, and as the plane took off to Delhi, I felt relieved, glad to be off the sick terrain of the city below me. I looked around. Please can I have some more water, cold please? Water. It tasted like ambrosia.
Water, the elixir of life – my thoughts meandered, Water – and then I saw her. Oho? Now who is that? That lady in the seat diagonally across the aisle – aha! The ‘Water’ woman. Deepa Mehta. Deepa Mehta of film ‘Fire’ infamy. Deepa Mehta, the controversial film director from Canada. Now what was she doing here in this plane now over-flying the city on the bank of Ganga? Well, she was shooting her next film, on a topic as controversial as Fire, this time named ‘Water’ – and the theme of the movie, the content, the story line and script – were sure fire red rags to the Hindu psyche and sensibility. And Kaashi, Banaras, Varanasi is nucleus of Hinduism. They had disrupted and damaged the sets, chased out Shabana from the scene and attacked the crew and personnel connected with the shooting of the film that denigrated Hindus.
I muttered a few choice Hindi swear words under my breath, some of which I had just picked up in the city below a few hours ago. Deepa, may your tribe decrease. May your kind dry out, dehydrate, desiccate. Now dear reader, you may well wonder why Deepa was target of my ill vibes. She doesn’t even know me: but God, do I know her. The mob that waylaid me, nearly lynched me. Bled me – yes, the rabid one on the busy by-lane of Varanasi, was remonstrating against her latest film, Water.
And I was caught in the, between Fire and Water. In Delhi I had my gash attended to, a few sutures and a gauze. Back home however, I became an instant hero, my family and students, shook my hand(my uninjured left one) for days, for a small town, news of a stabbing of a doc by a vicious rampaging mob was news. Only , I embellished the events, to make it sound I was more heroic than I was. After all, in the world of films Deepa scripts fancy themes and scores at the box office, so why not a small town teacher take a little advantage of the make believe world of cinema?
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