Water

[magid]

Last night I watched Water, and it's been in my mind all day. The story follows Chuyia, widowed at 7, and brought to Varanasi to live in a house of widows, the rest of them much older. She gets into things, as kids do, and through her, one of the others, a young widow, meets a Brahmin who follows Ghandi's ideas, ignoring social taboos. Which might have worked, had the head honcho widow of the house not been sending her out as a prostitute... including to his father. Things start to fall apart; it's not, in the end, a Disney-fied view of the world.

I'd known of how widows had been (still are?) dumped in cities not necessarily near where they had lived from reading Homeless Bird (Gloria Whelan). I hadn't realized just how many taboos there are on widows. At the time the movie is set (Ghandi has been released from prison, British still rule), it seemed that widows relied on begging, not working at all (except, apparently, the situation above...), though in the book (set later, after independence) widows were more expected to work. And widows were seen as pollution. And not allowed fried foods (?). Pretty much, their lives in the world ended when their husbands died, if they weren't wanted by the rest of the family. And if the husband died soon after marriage, the husband's family generally didn't want another mouth to feed, someone who wasn't really 'theirs'. Though this was still better than suttee...

I still don't know why the system of marrying off girls so young started. It means the birth family no longer has to support her, though they've had the big up-front cost of a dowry, and she's raised in the husband's home, likely ruled over by her mother-in-law. It's so strange to me that girls are married off so young. (And yes, I know that it happens today, too. And not only in India, either.)

I should appreciate my luck in having been born into a society where I can be who I choose to be more often.

Added bonus: John Abraham was very nice to look upon as Narayan.

Comments

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

widows in India have a horrible time even now.... they are considered "used goods" and in India they have a saying
"men are diamonds, women are cotton"
men can be washed clean. but cotton stains.....

old women are also in very poor state there. old widows three times so.
the older you are the less color you wear, more and more grey, white, drab.. eventually you wear white, the color of the dead.... having no sexuality, no passion... you are "dead" in society....

India is a very ... complicated. country. i love some things about it, but the rest? shudder....

[magid.livejournal.com]

In this movie, all widows wore white, all the time, no matter how old or young.

I'd not heard that saying before; that's horrible.