Around the Island

Library to screen a cinematic masterpiece

 

COURTESY PHOTO
COURTESY PHOTO

For several centuries, Hindu teaching encouraged Indian widows to immolate themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands. It was considered an act of piety. The practice was called Sati or suttee. It was outlawed by the British Raj in 1829. But Sati, named for the Hindu goddess of marital happiness and longevity, persisted well into the 20th century. As many as several hundred women a year hurled themselves onto their dead husbands’ funeral pyres. Two hundred and fifty Sati temples glorified the practice.

The alternatives were nearly equally dire. A widow could allow herself to be married off to a brother of her husband. Or she could disappear into an ashram, there to live in a community of widows for the rest of her life.

Director Deepa Mehta’s exquisite film, “Water,” explores the traditions of an Indian society on the brink of independence. The story is set in 1938; India was still a British colony, but laws already existed giving widowed women the right to remarry whom they pleased. However, as one character in the film observes, “We do not always follow the law when it is inconvenient.”

At the heart of the film is 8-year-old Chuyia. Her impoverished father sold her as a child-bride to an old man. Upon the old man’s death, Chuyia, crying for her mother, is torn from her father’s arms and consigned to an ashram on the banks of the Ganges, to live a life of self-denial by way of atoning for the sin of having lost her husband. The ashram is run by Madhumati, a fat and domineering widow who sees to it that Chuyia’s hair is shaved off and that she is forced to wear the white sari of a lifelong widow.

Among the other widows in the ashram is Kalyani. She, too, is young, though not as young as Chuyia, and she has been allowed to keep her hair — but only so that she will remain sexually attractive to the wealthy clients to whom Madhumati provides her through a pimp. Kalyani is the ashram’s main source of income.

Kalyani secretly keeps a puppy, and it is because of the puppy that Chuyia and she become friends. Chuyia also makes friends with two older, more motherly residents of the ashram. But her presence there creates turmoil. Her childish high spirits and innate intelligence and sassiness encourage the older women to question their fidelity to a religion that sentences them to life imprisonment simply because society believes they have no use or value apart from their husbands.

When, through Chuyia, Kalyani meets a tall, handsome, foreign-educated idealist and follower of Gandhi, she rebels, embarking on a love affair that defies religious and cultural taboos. It’s an invitation to tragedy. And to liberation.

The sacred Ganges plays a central role in “Water.” Indeed, it is practically a character. Unfortunately, religious conservatives took such exception to the film — even before filming had begun — that they threatened Mehta’s life and destroyed the film’s sets. Mehta moved the entire production to Sri Lanka, and filmed its scenes along the banks of a river there.

Nonetheless, “Water” is a luminous, lyrical work, deeply human and humane, a stunningly perceptive film and a compassionate work of social commentary. As Roger Ebert wrote, it “finds beauty in the souls of its characters.”

“Water” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It runs just under two hours. It will be shown at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 25 downstairs at the Shelter Island Library.

Please come see this lovely movie. Bring a pal. You’ll both enjoy it.