Summary

Set in 1938 colonial India against the backdrop of Mahatma Gandhis rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, a child-bride who is abandoned at a widows ashram after the death of her 50-year-old husband. Unwilling to accept her fate, Chuyia disrupts daily life in the ashram and becomes a catalyst for change in the lives of the widows. When her friend, the beautiful widow-prostitute Kalyani, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the delicate balance of power within the ashram. Review: "A deeply moving story, elegantly told, with all the assurance of a master." M.G. Vassanji "In this book, Sidhwa deepens the reader's appreciation of Mehta's movie while adding the resonance of her own literary voice to the heart-wrenching story of a Hindu child-widow deprived of her human rights by rigid enforcement of Hindu tradition. Sidhwa not only respects Mehta's script, she maintains a complicity with the actors in the film." The Montreal Gazette