Max Hsiao
ENGL 131
Professor Lehmann
April 23, 2019
Water
To preface, it was difficult to find relation between Deepa Mehta’s film Water and William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in regards to the plot, so I am interested to see if others did during discussion. Therefore, this essay will focus mainly on specific scenes that provoked me in some way. Update: As of Thursday, April 25’s class, I found out that this film is related to Romeo and Juliet. It has been many years since I have read Romeo and Juliet, so I am not very familiar with the plot. Therefore, I struggled to draw relations. This was also a very challenging film for me to grasp, as I’m sure it was for others, since I am not very familiar with India’s politics and history. Anyway, here is my take on the film!
Metha’s film lends criticism not to religion itself but to the abuse of religion as a means for economic gain and control over individuals. The film involves the story of two women, Chuyia and Kalyani, who live in a religious temple full of widows under one domineering, abusive leader, Madhumati. However, this essay will focus on Kalyani’s life. As part of the rules of this temple of widows, it was custom to keep one’s hair short. However, Kalyani was the only exception in this household, maintaining her long, lustrous hair. The audience later learns that the reason Kalyani was allowed to have long hair under Madhumati’s rule was because Madhumati was selling Kalyani into prostitution for economic gain. Their relationship is reflective of a predator-prey archetype where Madhumati acts on predatory intentions in order to govern the livelihood of her prey, Kalyani, who has nothing to gain from the predatory relationship. Ultimately, the film represents the control over individuals.
There are multiple layers to which the film conveys the aforementioned idea. Firstly, Water takes place in a temple of widows. This temple served as a place for religious devotion, a devotion that some such as Madhumati capitalized on and abused. It is presumed that she was the one to have imposed a ‘no men allowed inside the temple’ rule as she reinforced the point throughout various times in the film. One man, Narayan, who took interest in Kalyani consistently visited the gates of the temple seeking her. The fact that he sought her beyond the gates of the temple articulates the image that Kalyani was a prisoner in jail, and who can visit her is dictated by those who run the jail. In this case, the one running the jail is Madhumati who allows Kalyani to see others when she can benefit economically and discourages Kalyani to see others when her power is being threatened. In this case, Narayan was the only one who could threaten the hierarchy and very livelihood of the temple as it is revealed that trafficking Kalyani payed for the temple’s rent. Therefore, if Narayan could take Kalyani away and marry her, the temple that Madhumati oversaw would be threatened. On the path to a seemingly successful marriage between Kalyani and Narayan, Kalyani finds out that Narayan’s father had been sexually soliciting her, representing the control over an individual even outside of the temple. Consequently, Kalyani takes her life, and one of the widows asks Narayan why they are in the temple. Narayan responds that their temple is a place simply about the topic of money under the guise of religion, being about one less mouth to feed. As Narayan was an outsider relative to the temple, his idea alludes to the reality that it was not just about making money in the temple, it was about saving money outside of it. In essence, he claims saving money is the reason the widows were in the temple.
The notion that a woman’s sexuality is an object that can be exchanged whether in the temple or outside the temple proposes the idea that even outside the temple, outside of religious practice and inside the realm of law, one is still imprisoned by some domineering figure whether it be Madhumati, the government discouraging remarriage, or individuals perpetuating the commerce of women. Consequently, the film implores the viewer to question his or her own state of ontological being, asking whether one is truly free in this world or not.