Aklını başından almak

On Friday Joe and I went to see Water at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline. We wanted to see Brick with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lukas Haas, but we arrived late and it was sold out. Water looked interesting, so we decided to give it a shot, since we were already there and had nothing else to do. I guess it was appropriate given the deluge to hit eastern Massachusetts.

Directed by Deepa Mehta, Water is the final film in the Indian-born Canadian filmmaker’s trilogy that began with Fire in 1996 and Earth in 1998. The beautifully filmed story is set in 1930s India during British colonial rule and the rise of Gandhi’s nationalism. At the time, child marriages were still common, and Chuyia, an eight-year-old widow, is taken by her father to live in an ashram, as prescribed by the ancient Laws of Manu, to live out her years in chastity and social isolation. Hindu widows were forbidden from remarrying, were shorn of their hair, wore bland and colorless saris, and depended upon charity for their survival.

In Water, one young and attractive widow named Kalyani is allowed to keep her hair so that she can be pimped out by the head of the ashram, a foul-mouthed woman who, like the evil stepmother in Cinderella, locks Kalyani away in the attic to prevent her from marrying Narayan, the tall, dark, and handsome pro-Gandhi Brahmin intellectual who has become captivated by Kalyani’s beauty, in spite of the fact that, as a widow, she is off-limits.

For all its beauty, Water is a dark film. It is an indictment of a religion and a social order that condemns the vulnerable and less fortunate to a life of exploitation and social ostracism on the margins. Its portrayal of the plight of Hindu widows is heartbreaking, and the doomed romance between Kalyani and Narayan ends in tragedy. However, the film’s end offers hope with Gandhi’s rise to power holding out the promise of liberation for the emerging nation’s widows, while one of the film’s more ambiguous characters places Chuyia in the care of Gandhi’s followers as his train passes through their town, so that she can escape Kalyani’s fate.

On Saturday, I did some errands and practiced in the afternoon. That evening, we had dinner at our home with a friend, who brought us some fantastic rakı. I had about six shots in all—three before dinner with our μεζέδες and three after dinner. Had I imbibed more I would have started removing my clothes or our guest’s.

The next morning we drove up to Lynn to visit my parents. My dad wanted us to help them install some new combination smoke/carbon monoxide detectors after we all went out to brunch for Mothers Day. We were hoping to avoid the lunch crowd, plus we had to be back in Boston by 5pm to get ready for our gig that night at MEZE Estiatorio in Charlestown.

The North Shore was a real mess on Sunday. In Saugus we hit major traffic on Route 1, which had already begun to flood. We arrived at my parents’ house to discover that their basement was beginning to flood. It was less than an inch, but it was enough to upset my dad. In thirty-four years, their basement has flooded only one other time. We managed to coax him out of the basement and get him to agree to leave the house to get some food, and we foolishly tried to drive to the Brothers’ Restaurant and Deli in Danvers Square. We couldn’t access Route 128 because of flooding in Peabody. We then tried to go through Peabody Square, which was already under water by that point. Somehow we managed to make it to the Brothers’ Deli in Salem, where we had a nice breakfast. I was a little concerned that we were going to end up getting stuck in Salem or, worse yet, being stuck on the North Shore and missing our gig, but we made it back into Boston without incident.

That evening we had our first gig at MEZE. Joe and I had spoken to both the owner and general manager last week, and they hired us on the spot for Mothers Day and also for a wine tasting in June. Playing at MEZE is a big deal for us. The dining room is spacious and beautifully designed, it’s always crowded, and the food is fantastic with a much more creative menu than other Greek restaurants in the greater Boston area. We played from 6 to 9pm on Sunday, and in spite of the rain, the place was packed. There were lots of families with younger children, and kids always love our exotic instruments and sound. Overall, we got a great response. We even got people up dancing, including some of the wait staff. I’m excited about the prospect of us playing there on a regular basis.