Water

“Learn to live like a lotus, untouched by the filthy water it lives in.”      

We watched Water a few evenings ago, a Hindi language film set in India in 1938. It follows the story of Chuyia, a seven year old girl whose husband (child marriages were common at the time) died and who was consequently sent by her family to live in poverty in an ashram, the fate of Hindu widows (still a common practice). At the ashram she befriends a young woman, Kalyani, widowed at 9, who is being sent across the Ganges as a prostitute to brahmin men by the cruel and unhappy head of the widows to help finance the place. Kalyani meets and falls in love with a man who is a follower of Gandhi and willing to defy tradition, and they plan to marry. Well, it doesn't end well...

The movie was beautifully filmed, the acting spot on, and the score phenomenal. I read a wee bit about the production and was surprised to learn that it was actually filmed in Sri Lanka. When they first started filming in India, violent protests broke out among Hindu fundamentalists, with sets being thrown into the river and the director's (Deepa Mehta) effigy being burned. Despite having procured all the necessary permissions and script approval from the government beforehand, they offered no help in the situation and production was forced to shut down. I was also surprised to learn that the young girl playing Chuyia speaks absolutely no Hindi, and learned all of her lines phonetically. Pretty amazing.

This was Mehta's third film in her Elements trilogy (the first two being Fire and Earth, neither of which I've seen), all of which seem to challenge tradition, particularly as it affects women in India. The conditions in some of the ashrams, according to Mehta, haven't changed, and it's disturbing to imagine that this is the life of millions of women still.

If you get a chance, check it out.