Water
Cast John Abraham, Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, Sarala, Music: Mychael Danna, Direction: Deepa Mehta



This movie, when Deepa Mehta decided to film it in Banaras, created a lot of controversy. The Hindu fundamentalists ransacked the sets, burnt or broke expensive equipment and in turn, successfully stalled the shooting. Later Mehta announced that the project is dropped and thereafter everybody went home.

Meanwhile, she quietly recasted and began filming it in Sri Lanka. I've read the news about John Abraham and Lisa Ray featuring and considering the cast and the location, doubted the quality of the output. I even thought Mehta didn't have a credible story and wanted to make Water just to cash in on the controversy. Perhaps due to the under-expectations or my wife's charged involvement, the movie indeed turned out good.

First off, it has a very credible story. It happens around late 30s when the freedom movement began heating up. The child marriage is quite prevalent. So are the child widows. Often, the grown up men are married to young children. The widows, both child and adult, are sent to widow homes in Banaras to lead an ascetic life. Not before their heads are shaved, jewels are snatched and colourful sarees are changed to white cotton saree.

The story starts with a child Chuyia who just turned widow and is being put to this torture and sent to home. The home is managed by an elderly malicious lady, a widow again and she runs it with an iron will. Here, we get to meet all kinds of souls. One who has converted her widow life to almost a masochistic sainthood. One who has not forgotten the various sweets she ate during her wedding and still longs for it because as widow, she is forbidden from eating fried foods and sweets. This character really touched my heart because unlike others where the trauma is quite evident, her quiet yet constant brooding for ladoos and rasgullas though comical, was eerily disturbing.

And well, there is this girl Kalyani who is in her early 20s, another victim of the child marriage and curiously made to retain her lustrous hair because, well, I shall not reveal the story any further here.

The story, however, revolves around these characters with freedom struggle as the backdrop and John Abraham featuring as a student attracted by Gandhian idealogies. A surprisingly good choice because he has fit into the 30s youth very comfortably and has delivered his most subtle and career best performance.

Water mainly aims to show you how widows were forced to abject poverty, frugal living, self-denial and how Hinduism, especially the Manu Dharma written perhaps some 3000 years back was used to define their mean way of living. But at another layer, it goes beyond widows and raises certain serious questions on feminism, how freedom struggle was attributed as a direct enemy of orthodoxy, and the role of brahminism. Also, contrary to the gloomy backdrop, the movie portrays a very fine and fragile love story in a surprisingly romantic fashion.

And finally, Gandhi too features briefly and Water poignantly shows how he has indeed touched every single life in his time.

The camera (Giles Nuttgens) moves quite calmly over the adopted banks of Ganges and the home, never seems to be in a hurry and not being dominant. The characters are given enough time to portray themselves and the frames appears to liesurely moves around them. For the entire rhythimc flow of the movie, the climax is quite racy
indeed. But I certainly didn't complain because despite everything, it portrayed motivation and hope.

Water is a personal success for Deepa Mehta because the cynical critics like me have been emphatically silenced and I must happily admit that Water is a very powerful film. Without controversy, this would have been commercially quite successful. Nevertheless, it is certainly not Mehta's loss. I sincerely hope Mr. Bal Thackerey, now that he has a lot of free time, gets to watch this and hang his head in shame.