Indigo-Daisy

I have seen the film "Water" in the video stores for quite some time now. It was first released in 2005 and I finally picked it up a few weeks ago. "Water", which is spoken in Hindi, takes you back in time to Varanasi, India in 1938 during British rule and the beginning of the Gandhi movement.

During that time it was Hindu tradition for very young girls to marry older men, and it was also Hindu tradition that if her husband died, the young widow had only three choices, to die with her husband, to marry her husbands younger brother, or to spend her remaining years shunned from society in an ashram for widows.

The film began with a young girl named Chuyia who at only 8 years old became a widow. When Chuyia’s husband died, they shaved off her beautiful lockets of hair, took her from her mother and placed her in the widows ashram, never to see her family again.

A sad beginning to say the least.

However, as the story unfolded, Chuyia became friends with another widow named Kalyan, who was a young and beautiful woman and the only widow allowed to grow her hair long. The relationship between Chuyia and Kalyan was one that literally lit up the screen. There were scenes with them together that just made your heart want to dance right out of your body and into their world.

The film was about the need to be loved and accepted, and the pain of being deceived.

It was about realizing that just because something is a religious tradition or written as law, doesn’t make it right.

It was about learning to listen to your heart, that if it doesn’t feel right to your heart, then it probably isn’t.

Absolutely stunning cinematography, it was simply beautiful through and through.