Whirlpools on the Ghats

With a quietude that’s almost unsettling, Water introduces us to eight-year-old Chuyia, transported from a child’s carefree life and a loving family to a widows’ ashramon the fringes of society. Still years away from a proper under-standing of the ways of the world, she is told that she no longer exists as a person—all be-cause of the sudden death of a husband she had barely even met. (“Once widowed, a woman was deprived of her useful function in the society—that of reproducing and fulfilling her marital duties.”)

Slowly, Chuyia overcomes her sense of dis-location, makes friends with other women in the ashram and stirs a few hackles with her di-rectness in situations where others simply fol-low the letter of the ancient texts. “Where is the house for the men widows?” she innocently asks at a gathering, provoking shouts of out-rage: “God protect our men from such a fate!”

However, the child’s words have an effect on the middle-aged Shakuntala, who tries to con-quer her own inherent conservatism by ques-tioning the scriptures.

Meanwhile, a progressive-minded young idealist named Narayan falls in love with Chuyia’s friend Kalyani, a beautiful widow whose earnings as a sex worker help in running the ashram.

One of Sidhwa’s great strengths is to make a point without underlining it. She does over-stress the irony in a couple of places—for in-stance, when Madhumati, the ashram head who has forced Kalyani into prostitution, says: “We must live in purity, to die in purity.” But the overall restraint with which the story is told helps strengthen the impact of the more dis-turbing moments.

By drifting almost unnoticeably from the commonplace to the horrific, Water implicates the reader: When the widows celebrate Holi, for instance, one is briefly lulled into thinking that they have their own self-sustaining little com-munity, that maybe their lives aren’t so bad af-ter all. But then something happens to demon-strate the spuriousness of this thinking and remind us that circumstances have forced them into a life of compromise.

Despite the fact that the ashram has its own internal politics, and that we are constantly rooting for some characters (Chuyia, Kalyani, Shakuntala) against others, we are never al-lowed to forget that all these women are vic-tims of a cruel tradition which exists for no bet-ter reason than that “it has always been so”.

Even Madhumati, variously compared to a “beached whale” and a “satiated sea-lion”, and despicable in her treatment of Kalyani, has a human side. She too was once a young girl with dreams, and in the parasitic monster she has become, we can see how one evil begets an-other.

Elsewhere too, Sidhwa does a fine job of detailing the contradictions and layers of intolerance in society; on hearing the news that Mohandas Gandhi has proclaimed the Untouchables to be children of God, a eunuch wonders aloud “if hijras can be considered God’s step-children”.

The growing influence of Mahatma Gandhi does in fact seem to indicate a better future for society’s victims, and Water ends on a tenuous note of hope. But the story is still just as rele-vant; the violent protests that nearly aborted Mehta’s film are a reminder of how unthinking adherence to tradition can lord it over reason and humanity.