Water: A Novel

By Bapsi Sidhwa

The renowned author Bapsi Sidhwa and the equally renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta share a unique artistic relationship: Mehta adapted Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India for her brilliant film Earth, and here, Sidhwa adapts Mehta’s controversial film Water to the printed page.

Set in 1938, against the backdrop of Gandhi’s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, abandoned at a widow’s ashram after the death of her elderly husband. There, she must live in penitence until her death. Unwilling to accept her fate, she becomes a catalyst for change in the widows’s lives. When her friend Kalyani, a beautiful widow-prostitute, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the ashram’s delicate balance of power. This riveting look at the lives of widows in colonial India is ultimately a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith, and redemption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Release date: Jul 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781571319166

Bapsi Sidhwa

Born in Karachi and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Bapsi Sidhwa has been widely celebrated as the finest novelist produced by her country. Sidhwa is the author of five novels: The Pakistani Bride, Crow Eaters, An American Brat, Cracking India (which was made into the award-winning film Earth by Indian director Deepa Mehta in 1999, and was named by Modern Library one of the best books in English published since 1950), and, most recently, Water (which was based on Deepa Mehta’s screenplay for the film of the same name). Her work has been published in ten countries and has been translated into several languages. Among her many honors, Sidhwa has received the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest honor in the arts. She also served, at Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s request, on an Advisory Committee on Women’s Development in Pakistan. Sidhwa now resides in Houston.

Reviews for Water

[cariola_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Having seen the film version of Water last year, I was eager to read the novel. It takes place in the 1930s in India. Chuyia, age six, is married to a man in his forties. Per custom, she is allowed to remain at home until she reaches puberty. However, two years later, her husband falls ill with typhoid, and since it is a wife's duty to be by a dying husband's side, her father takes her to the in-laws' home. When her husband dies, Chuyia is sent to a widows' ashram where she will spend the rest of her life because widows--especially young widows--are a danger to society. The rest of the novel edtails her adjustment to her new life, her relationships with the other widows, and her contact with the outside world for which she yearns.The story is a striking one, However, the writing, I felt, left something to be desired.

[mrs0scholey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was fascinated by this novel. The characters are all so real and so heartbreaking. As a mother of a young daughter, I couldn't help but put myself in the role of parent to Chuyia and try to imagine what I would do if my child was taken to live in isolation from not only myself but the rest of society. I have not seen the movie, but reading the book has made me eager to.

[kambrogi_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When Deepa Mehta’s third brilliant film about women on the Indian subcontinent, Water, was due to be released in the US, Sidhwa was asked to write a novel version of the film. She did so, and the result is this book. Turnabout was fair play, as Mehta's second film, Earth, was based on the Sidhwa novel, Cracking India.It’s colonial India, and Gandhi’s rise to power has begun. A six-year-old Indian girl, Chuyia, is betrothed to a man in his 40's. After the wedding celebration, Chuyia returns home. She is expected to join her husband when she reaches the age of childbearing, however when she is only eight, her husband – whom she has met only once -- dies. A wife is a member of her husband’s household, and yet Chuyia can never be welcomed there. As a widow, she is believed to be a dangerous polluter of his home, having caused her husband’s death. She must be taken far away and abandoned in a special ashram, a house of widows. Chuyia’s new life is as a child among aging widows, outcasts from society who must beg for their food with shorn heads. Many of them came to the ashram as children, and have known little else in life. But Chuyia has always been a fighter, and her stubborn resistance to ancient superstitions adds a bright spot of life to the dreary existence of these women. Chief among her widowed protectors is Kalyani, a young woman who is allowed to keep her hair so that the mistress of the ashram can rent her out as a prostitute to local men of means. Through Chuyia, Kalyani meets the young nobleman Narayan, and against all the rules of tradition, they fall in love. But Narayan doesn’t know of Kalyani’s shameful late-night forays, and Chuyia’s youthful innocence may soon make her equally vulnerable to misuse by the mistress of the ashram.In the background, the influence of India’s British colonial masters and Gandhi’s assault on their rule is a constant. As the Mahatma’s historic train approaches their village, the characters’ dangerous choices come face to face with the realities and hopes of their times. As a fan of both Mehta and Sidhwa, and of the movie Water, I couldn’t wait to read the novel. It was everything I’d hoped for: a retelling of a fine tale and a well-written novel. Like most books compared to movies, it was able to provide more cultural background information and deeper interior motivation than a film is able to do. It's not better than the film, which is truly outstanding within its genre, nor is it equal to Sidhwa's masterpieces, but it is a great read and won't disappoint anyone -- unless they are comparing it to the movie.