When I was in college was when "Fire" and "Earth" released. I recall finding both films right-in-heart but all-wrong-in-execution. At the beginning of a Partition film like "Earth," can anything be more heavy-handed than a child picking up a pieces of a broken plate and wondering aloud "Can a country break into two, too?" I wanted to bury my head in the ground at that point. With "Fire", I liked the idea of two disillusioned wives finding the love and gratification, that they could never find with their husbands, with each other but somehow the love, lust portrayed on film wasn't quite compelling and a bit over-simplified. So ultimately, I felt that in theory, Deepa Mehta's films were great, but in realty, not at all. On the merit of her stories having a certain ethnic rigor, I felt her films carried a heft and importance that it did not completely deserve.
In college, I had the pleasure of meeting the director herself which was probably, up until yesterday, my most meaningful encounter with her creative psyche. There was a reception at a nearby this South Asian professor's house, and when I arrived, I was shocked to see both D. Mehta and this professor, standing outside in jeans and Converse sneakers, their long, wiry, greying hair down, smoking cigarettes, like two punks outside of a Lower East Side gig, peppering their conversation with curse words,both in English and Hindi. I sat silently next to them, wondering, "Weren't these women supposed to be Aunties? "
( For those unaccustomed to Asian concept of Aunties, it refers to the middle aged women who uphold certain traditional values of the South Asian middle-class, wearing saris during functions, inquiring about the academic status/success of progeny---basically, the epitome of propriety). Needless to say, this was the first time my mind discovered the idea that you could still be a punk at the age of 50. Awesome.
Anyhow, knowing the woman yet being disappointed in her movies, I sort of kept a distance from her other works. I had heard good things about "Water" but chalked it up to the exotic appeal of ethnic lore. But it always haunted me that my cousin had said the ending of the film was amazing.
So yesterday, post-call, I caught my mother watching the beginning of the film and right away, I was quite taken in by the gorgeous cinematography. So tactile, so lovely. I wish Bollywood films could be that lush in texture, allowing the camera to marvel at the flicker of flames, shafts of light sifting through banyan trees, menacing puffs of smoke from a dirty old man, damp hair, the constant negotiation of women with their saris. And through that, I gradually fell into the story about an ashram of widows, the younger ones sent for prostitution to keep the community afloat. It was told through four perspectives: a young six year-old widow, a beautiful widow who is prostituted to men, a middle aged but intelligent widow who accepts the faith and ascetism implicit in her circumtances but struggles with the wrong-doings and superstition that her own religion endorses, and a young, idealistic Brahmin who falls in love with the beautiful widow.
The story is compelling and I won't get too much into the plot. The performances for all involved were amazing, especially that little girl and Seema Biswas, who manages to say so much with only her eyes ( she needs to be in more movies; if she was white, male and American, she'd be called the second coming of Brando). Lisa Ray exudes a quiet poise that only adds to her ethereal beauty. She wears barely any makeup, is draped only in white cloth, yet she hovers in the film as a spectre of tragic loveliness, a young woman still struggling with her lost girlhood.
But what resonated with me, in this film, was the matter-of-fact description of the widows, their lifestyle, and their abuse. The soap-box moments were muted to merely demonstration; the details spoke for themselves. At one point, the six year old girl asks, "Where do the widowers go?" And all the widows are aghast that she could ask such a question, knowing that men, who lose a spouse, have the luxury to move on. But in this beautiful, simple moment, Mehta writes a scene that does display the hypocricy that the women, themselves, reinforce. It is hard for me to believe I was born into religion that allowed this to happen, not too long ago and even today. As my father says, this pervasive level of abuse is not seen in Buddhism, not condoned in the Vedas, but in fact, came from the Sacrament of Manu. For that reason, his own mother, my grandmother, treated religion from a completely pragmatic way, but never believed in its superstition.
My mother, after the film, told my a lovely story about her side of the family. Apparently, when my great grandmother, my mother's father's mother, was on her death-bed, she begged for some chicken soup. Widows were, by tradition, kept to a diet of food without taste and spices and were told to only eat once a day. My mother mused it was so ironic that they were essentially prescribed a lifestyle that was actually healthy and likely prolonged their own life of misery. Anyhow, my maternal grandmother struggled within herself---should she allow her mother-in-law to break her fast that she kept for 40 plus years?
My great grandmother passed away without her chicken soup, but my maternal grandmother resolved after that day that no widow shall be denied. In fact when her own mother and friends were widowed, she took the iniative to not only feed them but feed them well.
I never met my maternal grandmother and I only spent little time with my paternal grandmother but I can't help thinking these women, in their own compelling ways, negotiated with tradition. And arrived at the same conclusion in the end.
That said, Brava, Deepa Mehta!
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