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The Hindu widow and those mystifying compromises

Tanveerul Haque gets glued to a poignant tale
A bookmark that I have states, "Never judge a book by its movie”. I think it is particularly apt for Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Water as it is based on the movie. Movies are based on books but this one's the other way round. The author was asked to write the novel in ninety days to coincide with the release of the movie. The story is dated 1938, with Gandhi's Ahimsa movement gathering momentum.
Widowhood in Hinduism is a very unique form of existence that was perpetuated without question for centuries. We have nebulous conceptions of this phenomenon from various Bengali writings. I think Bapsi Sidhwa being a woman, has been able to bring out the trials, tribulations, sensory deprivations and vicissitudes of Hindu widowhood in its stark nakedness. That in itself hits the reader like a sledgehammer.
Reading the book is a treat to be doled out in small measures.
The story revolves around the eight year-old Brahmin girl Chuyia (meaning little mouse), who is married off to a much older Brahmin without her knowledge. Widowed two years later, never meeting her husband, let alone knowing him. She accompanies the dying man to the Ganga river bank somewhere on the border of Bihar and Bengal. Her mother-in-law and her father take her along by bullock cart. After the funeral pyre has burned down, they abandon her in a nearby ashram. Widows are accursed she has to
make amends for the sins from her previous life which supposedly caused her husband’s death.
There is the description of Chuyia's childhood (shall we say girlhood?). Her playful abandon brings back memories of our own childhood. And then the sudden, jarring descent into the harsh life of an ashram! The shaving of the head, the abandonment of coloured clothing, the restriction of died It's like Alice falling down the unending hole only not arriving in Wonderland but in Nothingland! In her own mind Chuyia fantasises that her mother will come to rescue her from the ashram any day. But she finds no escape and the head of the ashram Madhumati inducts her into widowhood.
Against this backdrop, we learn the rules of the game of an ashram of that period --- the hierarchy, the pecking order, the mystifying compromises, the helplessness that Hindu widows had to endure. The rigid power structure. Its unchallenged acceptance. The position of the "Madame" of the house -Madhumati, a thickset woman in her 70s. The use of the eunuch Gulabi (not an inmate of the ashram) by Madhumati. To consolidate her own position. To ferry the beautiful Kalyani, the ill-fated heroine to the gentrified patrons in the ashram's vicinity. Kalyani's earnings take care of the provisions of the ashram and the drug habit of the Madame. She was forced into prostitution as a child
and is the only widow whose hair is not shorn.
Of all the widows in the ashram, Shakuntala is the only literate one. She maintains a stern reserved aura of her own and even Madhumati gives her a wide berth. She is a devout Hindu and finds consolation in the guidance of the priest Sadananda who enlightens her on the true spirit of Hindu Scripture.
One day in Chuyia's company there is a chance meeting of Kalyani with Narayan the scion of a rich Brahmin and the hero of the novel. There is immediate chemistry between the two a fatal attraction but circumstances prevent both from following their hearts' desires. Though they contrive a secret meeting at the riverside (ghat) it is very brief, Kalyani turns back Narayan, saying that conversing with widows is a cardinal sin.
Of course Kalyani always has Narayan on her mind and as a form of protest she sullenly attempts to disobey Madhumati by not serving her clientele.
A determined Narayan contemplates a secret tryst with his beloved. Using Chuyia as a go-between, Narayan sets up a clandestine rendezvous. They meet and ride in a covered horse buggy through the British cantonment area in secluded privacy. He professes his undying love to Kalyani and informs her of his secret plans to elope with her.
A breathless Kalyani confesses the secret wedding plans to
Chuyia who is overjoyed at the prospect of a wedding feast where one can indulge in eating all the forbidden delicacies to one's heart's content.
Narayan's accidental meeting with Kalyani and the blossoming of irrepressible love and desire put the reader on guard for a star-crossed tragedy. The diaphanous love story is wonderfully woven into the morbid existence of the ashram. The characters in the ashram all female are portrayed with the intense sensitivity that is possible only by a feminine author of Sidhwa's calibre.
Kalyani struggles within herself to maintain her sanity and nurture her love. All the while unsure of her fate her acceptance by Narayan's parents, the breaking of social taboos. The discourse between mother and son when Narayan reveals he wishes to marry a widow. The mother's shock and ultimate grudging acceptance are poignant.
Catastrophic consequences arise when the news of the imminent marriage between Kalyani and Narayan is revealed. Madhumati cannot reconcile with Kalyani's audacity. She storms into Kalyani's isolated room wrestles her to the ground, cuts off her long black hair and locks her up without food or
Shakuntala rallies to Kalyani's support. Much against the wishes of the other widows in the ashram, in an act of defiance, she sets Kalyani free.
Kalyani leaves the ashram with Madhumati's insults buzzing in her ears. She bathes in the ghats and meets Narayan in the adjacent temple. A passionate Narayan proposes to her. Upon her acquiescence Narayan takes her on a boat ride to his father's home. The boat ride is described in ethereal beauty. As the boat rounds a bend in the river Kalyani is aghast at the sight of Narayan's family home; she asks Narayan's father's name and immediately demands that Narayan turn the boat around; not revealing to an utterly befuddled Narayan the reasons for her change of mind.
In a change of scene, we see
Narayan confront his father - to be told the stark reality that he had used Kalyani as a prostitute. Shattered in grief and sorrow Narayan decides to pick up Kalyani from the ashram and join Gandhi's train which is due to arrive at the station.
It is too late. Kalyani is dead.
Kalyani's dreams have suddenly vanished into thin air. The raised expectations and the dashed hopes. She knows she has no place in the ashram. She returns to the ghat and decides to drown herself and thus “mother Ganges claims her daughter”. Suddenly the landscape has turned monochrome.
Against this desolate scenario we see the evil Madhumati sending out Chuyia with the pimp Gulabi for Narayan's father as a new offering. By the time Shakuntala finds out she rushes to the shore only to find a ravaged Chuyia returning in a senseless state. TYaumatizcd she spends the night at the ghat with Chuyia in her lap. At first light she walks through the town with Chuyia in her arms. In a daze she learns that Gandhi's train is at the station and people in droves are going there to receive his blessings. As the train pulls off Shakuntala beseeches people on the train to take Chuyia with them. Suddenly she spots Narayan on the train and gives Chuyia to him.
The train departs.
Tanveerul Haque (tanveerhq@yahoo co uk) is a businessman, a booklover and an intrepid traveler Also a TRC member