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Women, Widows and Rights: Deepa Mehta's "Water"

An eight-year-old girl is wakened by her Hindu father and told that her husband has died. We are in India in the late 1930's. The girl, Chuyia, is taken to a widows' house where, like the 14 women residents, she faces a lifetime of bleak destitution. The girl doesn't even remember being married.

Thus begins Canadian director Deepa Mehta's Water, a film about the lives and struggles of women caught within an oppresive religious tradition enforced by human self-interest, hypocrisy and bullying.

The plot centres on an ancient Hindu practice, still widespread, whereby families ship off widows to ashrams where they live as social outcasts. Without a husband, the women are seen as a burden and worthless. The film reports that there were 34 million Indian widows in 2001, most living in destitution.

Chuyia's ashram is ruled by a foul-tempered woman, who traffics another resident, the beautiful Kalyani, to the rich Brahmins across the river.

A third woman, Shakuntala, attempts to resign herself to her circumstances, but her feelings keep subverting these efforts. It is through Shakuntala's unaccepting eyes and Chuyia's questions ("Where is the house for men widows?") that we see the irrational oppressiveness of the ashram.

Bleak as this life is, moments of laughter and play suggest that a hunger for life persists in these women.

Water is now available on DVD. Deepa Mehta recently contributed to a new Amnesty International public service announcement.


This film review was republished from the Activist, May/June 2006 Issue, Amnesty International Canada's monthly magazine.

Amnesty International Canada

posted by Annamarie at 2:33 PM