Review and Analysis of Deepa Mehta’s Water
Review and analysis of Water by Deepa Mehta
Masha Allah…what a movie…
This morning, for my Asian Literature class, we watched the movie “Water”, produced by Deepa Mehta (if I have not mistaken the producer’s name).
Basically it was about widowed women in pre-Gandhi India.
Here is a synopsis:
India, 1938: The movie starts by showing 7-year-old Chuyia chewing on a sugar cane stick, in a cow-driven carriage, which carries her dying ‘husband’. Her husband dies and Chuyia’s head full of hair is clean-shaven, and her bracelets are broken off her and in the next scene, she is wearing only what appears to be a white tunic. Her father sends her off to a widow ‘board-house’, in which she must live in for the rest of her life, living in “self-denial” and somewhat ostracized from society. She gets to know her housemates, whose ages range from the old and wrinkly ones, to the pretty-looking adolescent ones. ‘Madhu Didi’ (Didi stands for sister) seems to be the one in control, Patiraji incessantly talks of sweets, Shankutala is sour but protective, and Kalyani is warm, friendly and different: she wears her hair long and lives upstairs by herself. Kalyani also keeps a dog (named Kaalu), which is forbidden in their premises.
One day, while Chuyia and Kalyani were drying Kaalu by the Ganges River, Kaalu escapes and runs into town. Chuyia chases him and bumps into Narayan, a young, educated, and liberal Indian man. He walks her back to Kalyani and wants to befriend Kalyani, but Kalyani refuses to talk to him (She says it is a sin). They leave him, but he enquires about the state of the widows to his friend Rabindra (whose father regularly sleeps with the widows, specifically Kalyani)
Scenes in which the widows listen to religious talks are intertwined into the main plot, in one of which Chuyia questions the preacher, “Where is the house for widowed men?” and gets a terrible verbal lashing from the widowed women.
Narayan soon learns about Rabindra’s fathers’ habits when he encounters the Gulabi or procurer (bapak ayam in Malay). Meanwhile, he has taken a (non-sexual) liking onto Kalyani. Failing to see her, he sends a note to Kalyani through Chuyia, and being illiterate, Kalyani gives the note to Shankutala to read. Shankutala reads the note to her and lets her decide whether to meet him. She goes to see Narayan and Narayan reads a poem to her, titled “Meghdoot”, “Cloud Messenger”. Soon after, Kalyani is also smitten with Narayan and Narayan plans to marry her. All this is also intertwined with scenes of Kalyani being sent off by the Gulabi (procurer/bapak ayam) to “her customers” and the Gulabi’s reports to Madhu Didi about Mahatma Gandhi’s movement. This reveals to the audience that Madhu Didi has a part to play in turning the widows into prostitutes.
Soon enough, the news of Narayan’s plan to marry Kalyani spreads. Madhu Didi is enraged and cuts Kalyani’s hair and locks her up in her room. Shankutala questions her preacher about the rule on widowed women in their holy scriptures and he informs her about the new law, which allow widowed women to re-marry. This enlightens her and she frees Kalyani.
Kalyani goes to Narayan and they head to his house across the river. However, approaching Narayan’s house, Kalyani asks Narayan for his father’s name and then asks to turn back. She tells Narayan that his father is also one of her ‘clients’. Narayan confronts his father and his father explains, that they are from the Brahmin caste and this allows them to sleep with any woman they like, and to sleep with a widowed woman is actually an honour for her. He tells Narayan that since he can’t marry Kalyani, he can take Kalyani as a mistress instead. Meanwhile, Kalyani returns to the board-house and immediately Madhu Didi asks her to wait for Gulabi. Kalyani goes to the Ganges River and drowns herself.
Shankutala and Chuyia grieve for Kalyani by the Ganges River and Narayan joins them. Shankutala laments on why are they ostracized by society, and Narayan says that the law about ostracizing widowed women is a money-saving technique “disguised as religion” because there is one mouth less to feed, less money to spend.
Shankutala’s preacher later tells her that Gandhi is one of the few men in the world who listens to his conscience, and Shankutala questions, ‘What if our conscience conflicts our faith?” (Referring to Kalyani’s case). That night, Madhu Didi sends Chuyia off with Gulabi by enticing her with sweets and food. When Shankutala learns about this, she is enraged and hastens to the river to save Chuyia, but by the time she reaches it, Chuyia has already returned from the clients’ house. She cradles a sleeping and traumatized Chuyia. On her way back from the river, she hears an announcement; that Gandhi would be delivering a speech at the train station and the public is free to listen. She goes to the train station and listens to his speech. Gandhi ended his speech saying that he used to think that God was truth, but he then realized that truth is God. Shankutala is deeply touched and runs to the train, trying to get Chuyia on it, under the protection of Gandhi. A broken-hearted Narayan was on the train and spots Shankutala and calls out, “Didi, give her to me!”. The movie ends when Narayan grabs Chuyia and Shankutala watches the train passing her by.
A fact is displayed at the end of the movie: in 2001, there were 34 million widowed women in India.
My analysis:
I have met with this thought in my observations of various things:
o Man’s logic differs from man to man, and man’s logic (what they at times may dangerously label as truth and religion, or more contemporarily, human rights, and even staunchly attributed to god or as divine knowledge WITH or WITHOUT any proof)
o Man’s logic, (whether they want to admit this or not) differs because it is open to be freely influenced by their selfish desires, appetite, whims and fancies.
Example:
- Why is the Brahmin superior to the other castes?
- Why does the Brahmin’s superiority allows them to “sleep with whichever woman they want” and sleeping with especially the lower caste is “an honour” to the lower caste? (i.e the widowed women)?
- Why is the widowed women ostracized from society but allowed to become prostitutes? Which Holy Scripture said so?
- How does the principle/philosophy “Wives are part of their husbands” rationalize these rules: If the husband dies, the widowed woman has three choices:
- Burned along with the deceased spouse during his cremation
- Live in self-denial (ostracized from society, cannot remarry, etc)
- Marry her brother-in-law
Something that ‘sounds logical’ to me, might not ‘sound logical’ to you. True? The same is with, what is right to me might not be right to you. Some opinions, in the name of respect and peace, call for “respecting diversity” and thus “living in harmony despite the differences”. Could this be the ultimate solution for all the world’s troubles?
Seems that it isn’t so, because many people still fight against other’s beliefs and maintain (in fact go against the first principle [which is respect diversity]) a certain degree of what’s right and what’s wrong. The evidence is in the ever-alive feminist movement.
Why do we fight against Female Genital Mutilation? Why do we fight against Honour Killings? Why do we fight against Child Marriages? Why don’t we respect the difference in opinion /logic/truth there? We fight against FGM, honour killings and child marriages and yet ignore things such as the child-gods (in Tibet-if I’m not mistaken: taken away at a young age, only female, works as a ‘goddess’ until she begins menstruating, which by then she will be live in recluse, not allowed to marry and live a normal life). We revere/tolerate some things as ‘culture’. Why do we? Far worse than things that have religious attributes, are things that bring money in, such as prostitution, and the tobacco industry. Morally all of us might despise and believe in eradicating prostitution, but then how come a belief so deeply rooted is not capable to pull it by the roots? Because many a case, prostitution is a ‘tourist attraction’, it is a gold mine. And governments are fully aware of this and no matter how they might ‘seem’ to fight it and fight it, but hey, money is money. And we’re not talking dollars and cents here; we’re talking gazillions and gazillions. Seriously.
Something less obvious that prostitution but no less a gold mine is the exploitation of women, which Feminism is an advocator of. Yes, you read me right. Feminism is an advocator of women being exploited. A lot of people, men and women alike, make money from exploiting women. The very woman exploited make money out of her own exploitation. It’s a ‘legal’ business. The result? Everybody’s happy? Far from it. Women who are exploited are commercialized as an icon for other women to follow, and this in turn creates business opportunities for a lot of businessmen and women.
So in the name of business or accumulating mountains of moolah (money), the exploitation of women is legalized. It is the exploited woman’s right for permitting herself to be exploited; it’s a “human right”. Please respect her if she wants to look like that or act like this. Never mind that the gold-mine business is destroying society. It’s not wrong; to suppress desire and the freedom of women to be exploited is wrong. In the past she had been exploited unlawfully, let’s make it lawful. Let’s make it a business, an industry, and let’s make it fun and trendy for everyone to copy her and follow her footsteps. It would mean more and more money pouring in. By the way, it’s a great deal of fun; it’s pleasing to the eye and sexual appetite.
It’s not only fun for the average man to have the freedom to look at women who are pleasing to his eyes, but it is also pleasing to the average woman to get attention from men. Especially since she thinks that it is one of the techniques that will make her attractive to him and keep him attracted. But how many times in a woman’s life has she received unwanted attention? The answer is simple: she wanted to only attract the attention of men who she likes, but not all men, but her physical make-up/ dress up does not allow for only certain eyes to see her, all eyes do.
When we say “women”, the image of a full-grown ass-kicking female comes to mind. But the business of exploiting women affects all females: infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, children, adolescents, adults, and old women. How are they affected? When the average man become less than average and needs his growing desire to be satisfied. Pedophiles, date-rape, gang-rape, incest, adultery, fornication, teen-mothers, child-mothers, and the works. But don’t blame the business, that’s backward. And don’t blame women, that’s human right. Try God, he seems to be sexist. And blame men, because of them there is sexism everywhere; such as language.
Masha Allah…
Terima Kasih Allah, kerana menjadikan aku orang islam…
sarah hikmah.. study ausmat ke?
noname
August 1, 2010
bukan ausmat, TESL. =D
ummimusa
August 1, 2010