wordsworth
02-21-2007, 04:10 AM
Water
Author: Bapsi Sidhwa (based on the film by Deepa Mehta)
Page: 201, Price: 325
This is probably a rare time when an author has written a book, based on a film. Almost always, it has been the other way round. But then again, director Deepa Mehta and Bapsi Sidhwa have had a very close creative association, what with the former adapting Sidhwa’s The Ice Candy Man into 1947 Earth several years ago.
Now that the film has released all over US and Canada and has even been declared a huge hit, the producers of the film probably didn’t mind novelizing the film even before its official release in India. Also, it’s been well timed with Water’s Oscar nomination – an award which it has every chance of bagging.
The novel’s theme—a brutal examination of the lives of widows in colonial India, is riveting from the word go. The potency and emotional impact of the story is probably why Deepa Mehta refused to let go off her dream of making the film. And one must add that there’s great intensity and passion in Sidhwa’s storytelling that grips you by the soul at various places in the novel.
While the novel itself is a useful chronicle of the inhumanness that young and old widows were subjected to, what really elevates it to the sublime is the character of 8-year-old Chuyia.
Between Bapsi Sidhwa and Deepa Mehta, they’ve come up with a character rarely seen before. Chuyia is spirited, feisty, rebellious and raring to go. But as convention would have it, Chuyia is hurriedly married off and then widowed in a few months. Her in-laws send her to an ashram meant for widows, a sort of ghetto where they are meant to lead pathetically austere lives.
Chuyia’s feisty spirit never dulls till a very long time. Part of the reason for this is her warrior like spirit, impish charm and die-hard optimism. In true child-like outspokenness, she retorts to her imposing widow-in-chief, ‘I don’t want to be a stupid widow! Fatty!’
Most of the story moves through Chuyia’s eyes and, one must say, it’s a great narrative choice! Firstly, it allows the author to survey and describe the scenes with impartial, child-like curiosity, thereby also dispelling some of its solemnity.
Which is why, it’s a particularly ironic and touching when the 8-year old innocently asks ‘Didi, where is the house for the men widows’ All hell breaks lose with the widows screaming ‘God protect our men from such a fate! Pull out her tongue’
---Wordworth
Author: Bapsi Sidhwa (based on the film by Deepa Mehta)
Page: 201, Price: 325
This is probably a rare time when an author has written a book, based on a film. Almost always, it has been the other way round. But then again, director Deepa Mehta and Bapsi Sidhwa have had a very close creative association, what with the former adapting Sidhwa’s The Ice Candy Man into 1947 Earth several years ago.
Now that the film has released all over US and Canada and has even been declared a huge hit, the producers of the film probably didn’t mind novelizing the film even before its official release in India. Also, it’s been well timed with Water’s Oscar nomination – an award which it has every chance of bagging.
The novel’s theme—a brutal examination of the lives of widows in colonial India, is riveting from the word go. The potency and emotional impact of the story is probably why Deepa Mehta refused to let go off her dream of making the film. And one must add that there’s great intensity and passion in Sidhwa’s storytelling that grips you by the soul at various places in the novel.
While the novel itself is a useful chronicle of the inhumanness that young and old widows were subjected to, what really elevates it to the sublime is the character of 8-year-old Chuyia.
Between Bapsi Sidhwa and Deepa Mehta, they’ve come up with a character rarely seen before. Chuyia is spirited, feisty, rebellious and raring to go. But as convention would have it, Chuyia is hurriedly married off and then widowed in a few months. Her in-laws send her to an ashram meant for widows, a sort of ghetto where they are meant to lead pathetically austere lives.
Chuyia’s feisty spirit never dulls till a very long time. Part of the reason for this is her warrior like spirit, impish charm and die-hard optimism. In true child-like outspokenness, she retorts to her imposing widow-in-chief, ‘I don’t want to be a stupid widow! Fatty!’
Most of the story moves through Chuyia’s eyes and, one must say, it’s a great narrative choice! Firstly, it allows the author to survey and describe the scenes with impartial, child-like curiosity, thereby also dispelling some of its solemnity.
Which is why, it’s a particularly ironic and touching when the 8-year old innocently asks ‘Didi, where is the house for the men widows’ All hell breaks lose with the widows screaming ‘God protect our men from such a fate! Pull out her tongue’
---Wordworth