In the movie Water, Kalyani (Lisa Ray) was a young beautiful widow who was forced into prostitution by the leader of their ashram.
As Kalyani falls in love with Narayan (John Abraham), and leaves the ashram to marry him, she realizes that his father is one of her customers, due to which she returns back to the ganges and commits suicide.
Narayan returns back to her after having an argument with his father but by then it was too late.
My question is, if Narayan had returned back in time to not make Kalyani commit suicide, was there a chance for this couple to have a happily ever after?
This movie was set in 1938, and as said in the film itself, the law only recently allowed widows to get remarried. Law allowing something is one thing but society accepting it is another.
It's like law allowing homosexuality today but our society still has to go a long way to accept it as something normal.
Water is a sad and melancholic film, but Kalyani and Narayan's love story still makes us hope for a fairy tale ending, only to hit us hard with reality in the end. Even if Narayan and Kalyani had got married, it still would've been extremely difficult for her to adjust in her married life.
Narayan was an educated guy from an upper class rich family, while Kalyani was an illiterate. They were far from compatible. To think about it, most probably Narayan only fell for her because of her beauty, and the fact that it seemed like how easily he moved over her death just proved it.
On a side note I wonder if Chuiya got a happy ending or not. Shakuntala (Seema Biswas) handed her to Narayan to give her to Mahatma Gandhi. The movie wanted to make us believe that Chuiya ended up in safe hands for a brighter future.
But if you think about what Gandhi used to do with little girls in his ashram (implied in the movie also), things become grim.
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