Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ : a critique

 

“A widow should be long suffering until death, self-restrained and chaste.
A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven.
A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal.” ¹

Shot 1: A lush landscape splashed with a riot of colours and a cow-drawn cart carrying a little girl. The score reminds one of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ (for its semblance with the unforgettable ‘Rajya Kalyan’ raga by the maestro Ravi Shankar) and also the image of a lonely sweet-seller in some remote Indian village. A serene atmosphere prevails and a story unfolds……..  

Cut to the near end of the film and we find Mahatma Gandhi in one of his many gatherings during the Indian freedom movement that comprise of people from all strata of the society. One of the film’s central characters seeks refuge with him in search of solace, peace and a better future, perhaps…

“There are over 30 million widows in India according to the 2001 Census. Many continue to live in conditions of social, economic and cultural depravations as prescribed 2000 years ago by the sacred texts of Manu”²

In between, for almost two hours, we experience an exceptional ‘Indian’ story set in the British Raj of the late 1930s – the film : Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ (2005).

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“God willing, she’ll be reborn as a man”

‘Water’ is primarily a story of the struggle between love and faith. It’s the battle between tradition and individual expression. And like the other two Mehta films of the ‘elements trilogy’ (‘Fire’ and ‘Earth’), it depicts the lack of choice of individuals due to social and patriarchal regulations. With this film the director completes a circle which started with contemporary modern India (‘the politics of sexuality’), harking back to the time of the Indian Partition (the late 1940s – ‘the politics of nationality’) and finally to the India of the 1930s (‘the politics of religion’). The trilogy tries to examine patriarchal paradigms and raises quite a few questions in its stride and more importantly, it tries to distance itself from pointing fingers at individuals.

At the heart of the film there are 3 women – the young eight year old widow Chuiya, the young Kalyani (a stunning Lisa Ray who seldom seemed to be an Indian widow of the 1930s (sic) ) who used to prostitute and was the sole earning member of the widow-house a.k.a. the ashram³ (sic) and Shakuntala (a poignant Seema Biswas, of the ‘Bandit Queen’ fame) who governs this ashram. Chuiya is the destabilizing force in the house of sequestered individuals with her vibrancy, her questions against the internment and her complete censure of the patriarchal norms. On the fringes lie Madhumati, the ashram’s tyrannical mother figure who runs the prostitution chain and Narayan (an equally uncomfortable John Abraham as Lisa Ray), the young progressive follower of Mahatma Gandhi. However, as mentioned, this is essentially “about three women trying to break the cycle and trying to find dignity, and trying to get rid of the yoke of oppression”.⁴ The film starts off with Chuiya’s husband’s death and her coming to this ashram and finding it difficult to cope with a different life. In the middle we see the love-affair bloom between Kalyani and Narayan and in the end we see Shakuntala taking up the responsibility of a supposedly better life for Chuiya. In this sense, the film draws closer to Jafar Panahi’s ‘Circle’ where we find a host of women characters in the different strata of Iran’s society – all finally bound to an unsurpassable, invisible circle of patriarchal thread where meaning of women is in their relationship to men rather in the sexual gratification of men. The widows who are devoid of any material comforts are symbols of chaste and yet they are the pariahs of the society – defiled of any physical beauty lest they become victims of lust.  Ironically, Kalyani was permitted to keep her beautiful tresses in order to make her appealing to her nightly suitors. But the moment Madhumati knows of her love-affair with Narayan, she hacks off Kalyani’s hair and debases her.

“Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence”.⁵

This circle is reflected in the ashram where the widows are deprived of their ‘saviors’. They live in conditions of abject poverty – both spiritual and material. From this condition, at the death of a widow, another widow remarks starkly -“God willing, she’ll be reborn as a man”! But instead of meekly accepting all the agencies of confinement, there are occasions where we find a voice or two being raised – sometimes in sinister acts like the killing of Madhumati’s favourite parrot by Chuiya or in Shakuntala’s disobeying of Madhumati in freeing Kalyani. The director skillfully plays with the psychology of the characters, the time and the audience all together. Hence, we find situations which are non-linear in their interpretation e.g. in showing that the worst enemies of the widows are the widows themselves in being rigid to the age-old norms (patriarchy as an agency remains camouflaged). Altruistic acts are at times tainted with disbelief – Chuiya gets sweets for an old widow (who is obsessed with her dream of eating sweets) and when she dies the day after, Chuiya holds herself responsible for the forbidden act. On the backdrop of this iniquitous regime flows the Ganges, the holy river which submerges all sin. In the opening shots of the fleeting lily pads, the flowing rains and the serenity of the river, the director aims for a certain fluidity on screen as a contrast to the strict principle of the ashram. The flowing river symbolizing liberation and openness, taunts the widows in their denial of an ingenuous life. In Greek mythology the rivers Acheron and Cocytus were used to ferry the souls of the dead from the living world to the underworld of the dead. The river Ganges also acts as a bridge here – it ferries Kalyani’s battered soul and body from the ‘house of redemption’ to the ‘house of lust’ and mocks us at our face. And when Kalyani commits suicide, it transports the child Chuiya to that ‘underworld of the dead’.

The rape of Chuiya is poignant in its suggestion of the impending disaster and the complete obviation of any moral sanity of the Hindu upper caste. Two pairs of dichotomy acts here: on one hand the ‘impure’ lower caste against the ‘pure’ upper caste and on the other, the supreme ‘male’ gender as opposed to the ‘inferior’ female gender. This shows how individuals are inflicted with caste based and gender based distinctions that led to being sexualized in Indian society. The forcible entry of Chuiya into prostitution lead us to some other contemporary facts – the prevalent tradition of Devdasis is South India where young girls sacrificed to God soon end up prostituting to His disciples or the forced labour arrangement, the ‘Chukri system’ where young women are coerced into prostitution to pay off debts and the ‘Bachara’ tribe of Western Madhya Pradesh who still practise child  prostitution to support the poverty-stricken family (depicted in the documentary film ‘Highway Courtesans’ by Mystelle Brabbee (2004) ).

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“Truth is God”⁶  –  Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi, the great legendary leader of the Indian freedom movement has a very important role to play in the film ‘Water’. He is the voice of hope in turbulent times. Narayan, the messiah of hope in Kalyani’s life in particular and to Chuiya and Shakuntala in general, is progressive in his beliefs and is a follower of Gandhi. The soft-spoken, tender-heart law graduate recites poetry, absent-mindedly spills ink on his dress and plays flute – another fleeting imagery from Ray’s classic Apu (as the unforgettable young Soumitra Chatterjee in Satyajit Ray’s ‘The world of Apu’ (1959)). Narayan is vociferous in his debate with his anglicized friend and argues with his father on behalf of Gandhi. There are myriad moments during this phase of the film when Narayan gets a glimpse of Kalyani and romances her. The film leaves Chuiya’s life here and in the depiction of love between Kalyani and Narayan, it falters more than once, seems a bit too hurried and eventually becomes unconvincing.

Narayan confronts his father about the regulations of the caste system and the norms followed. After Kalyani’s death he debates on the actual reason for the widows to be sent to these houses in Varanasi – the reason is purely monetary than religious, reducing one member from the daily expense. Ultimately he leaves his house totally aghast finding that his father was one of Kalyani’s exploiters.

Not only Narayan, Mehta uses another holy man, rather an aged priest, in the ‘ghats’⁷ of the Ganges as the flag-bearers of reforms and also Gandhi’s views. The priest recites the holy texts to the widows and Shakuntala finds in him a philosopher and guide. He questions the validity of the texts that shun the widows from the society. He mentions Shakuntala that as per the holy texts, a widow has three options: (1) to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre, (2) to marry his brother (if he has one and it is permitted by the family), or (3) to live in poverty in a group home for widows. But he adds, that in changing times there is a law that favours widow remarriage (note this is almost eighty years after the Widow Remarriage Act was passed in 1856 by the unflinching campaigns for it by Iswarchandra Vidyasagar) though in reality it is ignored since the upper-caste Brahmins are ‘not benefited’ by the law. And unlike many other religious servants, he was quick in understanding the importance of Gandhi as he tells Shakuntala – “Gandhiji is one of the few in the world who listens to his voice of conscience”. But when Shakuntala questions back “what if conscience conflicts with faith?”, we fail to hear the director’s voice.

There is a sudden surge in Hindi films in general to show Gandhi as a reel person or using his ideals and thoughts as vehicles to promote film philosophy. Extending that, ‘Gandhi-giri’⁸ has started to become an accepted idiom of expression in art and culture as practised in India. In setting the film in the late 1930’s Mehta probably wanted to hit a couple of blows in one shot. On the one hand, in the depiction of Gandhi as a harbinger of hope, she silenced her critics who disrupted shooting of the film in 2001. On the other, with Gandhi, she wants to convey a strong social and political message. This is the time (the late 1930s) when the awareness of Gandhi is reaching beyond the limited intellectual periphery and touching the cauldron of caste and creed, rich and poor. Madhumati and her eunuch don’t advocate Gandhi since they fear their trade will be affected by Gandhi’s preaching (“untouchables are children of God”) and yet Gandhi stands for liberation, hope and emancipation. In Mehta’s ‘Fire’, the first film of the ‘elements’ trilogy, we find the two central female characters Sita and Radha take refuge to a mosque, another agency of male oppression. Mehta failed to capitalize on the female-male / protagonist-antagonist dichotomy there. In contrast, in ‘Water’, the symbol of Gandhi as the purifier of sin across caste, gender and class gains more momentum in its relevance to the Indian society of the twenty-first century. Gandhi and the Ganges represent the fluidity of life, the unobstructed flow of humanness and the path to spiritual freedom.

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Why ‘Water’? Why not?

In his seminal book “Modern Egypt”, Lord Cramer commented, "Want of accuracy which easily degenerates into untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the oriental mind. ......They are often incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth"⁹. This European outlook towards Arabs and Egyptians are probably true for all Orientals in general and the Indians in particular. Deepa Mehta herself admits: “….there are several conceptions that prevail in the west about India. There is firstly the spiritual India—a place where you go and find nirvana. Secondly, there is the conception that India is entirely poverty stricken, with a permanent kind of begging bowl attitude. There is the India of Maharajas, princes and queens, and the India that comes from nostalgia for the Raj. And there is always the prevailing pressure that people should feel superior to some other place: look how bad India is with all the beggars, aren't we lucky to be better off.”¹⁰. The question that logically crops up is, whether Mehta’s film aims to portray a different, self-esteemed India to the Western world or not. More importantly, whether her film aims for a Western audience in the first place. As an Indian emigrant to Canada, whose films are predominantly on Indian themes (though they enter festivals as Canadian films) probably there isn’t much doubt that her audience is essentially ‘global’. On top of that, there is no reason to believe that ‘Water’, to a Western audience, portrays anything but India’s ‘begging bowl attitude’, which she denounced in the interview referred above. As mentioned earlier, in 2000 when Deepa started working on this film, she faced with a harsh adversary in Shiv Sena who burnt down the sets fearing that this will portray India and her customs in poor light to the West. Interestingly, once Deepa completed the film in Sri Lanka afterwards, this incident added mileage to the general interest surrounding this film. In the film’s official website, the background of the film, starts as “It was once rumoured that Bal Thackeray was quoted as saying that the person he hates most in the world is Deepa Mehta”¹¹. It is apparent that care has been taken to mark this film as ‘controversial’ as possible for its own interests. Also thought provoking is the use of two actors with Anglo-Indian origin and marked ‘Western’ looks to portray the two important characters. John Abraham (as Narayan) and Lisa Ray (as Kalyani) are hopelessly misfit in ingraining the mood of the 1930s – they probably feature better in the International film festival ramps!!

Deepa Mehta has played safe, politically, in her representation of Gandhi as argued in the last section. During the final complete shooting of the film in 2005 in Sri Lanka, the Indian central ministry is ruled by the Congress(I) Government. Gandhi being the supreme of the Indian National Congress (the predecessor of the Congress(I) party), it seems a conscious inclusion in order to be accepted by the organizational powers. However, readers of Indian political history since the last century possibly cannot overlook the fact that the Congress in general, had never attacked at the root of the prevalent and wide-spread caste system itself or its economic and political manifestations. With all due respect to the fact that the Gandhi-led Congress had been vocal against certain atrocities against the widows, they had largely been oblivious of the dreaded caste disparity in the Indian society. The Congress was, and continues to be the bastion of power and money in the Indian political milieu – for, by and of the rich, upper caste, Hindu Indians. Hence, the revival of ‘Gandhi-giri’ as a social expression is farcical as well as misleading. Shakuntala’s troubled expression in the end probably depicts her own doubts about the fate of Chuiya but as the shot fades to titles we read that many widows still live in abject social and economic depravation. Gandhi’s movement in the end is probably incapable of ending this social cancer thereby dashing the hopes of millions of subalterns in the Indian sub continent. Hence, in showing Gandhi as a saviour and then commenting that the situation is more or less unchanged, the director is being street-smart.

These aberrations apart, the film is capable of raising certain questions – yes, in the Oriental mind as well, in spite of being ‘singularly deficient in the logical faculty’!! Deepa Mehta, in the end, should be thanked for achieving this feat.

                                                                                         

                                                                                                      Amitava Nag                

References:

1. The Laws of Manu Chapter 5 verse 156-161 Dharamshastras ( Sacred Hindu texts )
2. With this writing on the screen, the film ends.
3. The word ‘ashram’ means a place to pursue religious and spiritual disciplines in Hinduism. For further definitions refer http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9355935
4. Mayer, Andre (2005) Digging Deepa : Canadian filmmaker shines with Water . http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/water.html
5. The Laws of Manu ( Sacred Hindu texts ) Chapter 9 verse 3
6. Gandhi, M.K (1955)  Truth is God : Gleanings from the writings of Mahatma Gandhi bearing on God, God-Realization and the Godly Way Navajivan Publishing House Ahmedabad (India)
7. A 'ghat' is a broad flight of steps leading down to the bank of a river in India, used especially by bathers. For further definitions refer http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ghat
8. Gandhigiri is a colloquial neologism in a Hindi dialect specific to Mumbai, India which is used to express the tenets of Gandhism (the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi) in contemporary terms. For further readings refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhigiri
9. Baring, Evelyn and Cramer, Lord (1908) Modern Egypt New York: Macmillan Co., 1908, Chapter 34
10. An interview with Deepa Mehta By Richard Phillips,6 August 1999 - http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/meh-a06.shtml
11. The official website of Deepa Mehta’s film ‘Water’ -- http://water.mahiram.com/