Water by Deepa Mehta- A Review
Water is the final film in a trilogy by director Deepa Mehta after the films Fire and Earth. The film focuses on the denial of the Hindu widows by their community and their miserable condition in the 1939 in the holy city of Varanasi (Benares), popularly called Vrindavan .The film Water is set in the backdrop of the British rule in India in the 1939.The common practice at this time was the marriage of younger girls to older men .The girl child was a burden and the sooner she is married off the better. The eight year old little girl, Chuyia (acted by Sarla Kariyawasam) was married off for financial reason to an old man who naturally died leaving her a widow. She is supposed to live her whole life in renunciation worshipping and singing hymns (bhajans) to make amends for the sinful works (Karma) of her previous life for which supposedly her husband died but in reality they relieved their family from financial and emotional burdens. The film portrays fourteen widows of different age living together in a small, ramshackle two-storied house built around a central courtyard. The main dominant character in the film who rules this ashram is Madhumati (played by Manorama), a well built haughty widow in her 70’s.She is assisted by the pimp Gulabi(played by Raghuvir Yadav) who is a eunuch and supplies ganja, a kind of narcotic to Madumati and also updates her of the gossips and also accompanies Kalyani, the second youngest and the most beautiful having long hair, crossing the waters for prostitution. She is forced to do so to support the ashram. Shakuntala(played by Seema Biswas) is an inscrutable character and one of the few of the literates. She gets intellectual knowledge and understanding from a priest Sadananda, (played by Khulbhusan Kharbanda) whom she secretly loved and felt guilty at heart. Chuiya plays a very important role in the film and the widows see in her the children they once were and also think of their child that they will never have. Shakuntala devoted to religious rituals develops motherly feelings seeing Chuiya. Although she tries to guide Chuiya to follow the ways of the widows but stops to questions her options whether the small girl will also have to live like her, a life of subjugation and repression.
Content Source: Bukisa - Water by Deepa Mehta- A Review