Bapsi Sidhwa’s intense and moving novel Water is set in 1938, when the traditions of colonial India were being threatened by the modern ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. Against the backdrop of Gandhi’s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, betrothed at age 6 and widowed at age 8. According to Hindu tradition of the time, she is left to a widow-ashram, her head shorn, her life given over to penitence. There, she must live in penitence until her death. Inside the widow-ashram Chuyia encounters the strong and the weak, the corrupt and the honest, the victims and the victors. Unwilling to accept her fate, she becomes a catalyst for change in the lives of the Indian widows. When her friend Kalyani, a beautiful widow-prostitute, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the ashram’s delicate balance of power. This riveting look at the lives of widows in colonial India is ultimately a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith, and redemption. Sidhwa creates pasts for all her widows to give them humanity in their stripped and primal state. In fact, a happier past is the one thing that keeps each widow from despair. Sidhwa's humor and compassion glow in Water. The brightly dressed eunuch Gulabi declares, "This Gandhi is going to sink India." Yet Gulabi realizes that if Gandhi believes the untouchables (such as widows) might be children of God, "then eunuchs are His step-children!" Sidhwa vividly re-creates the gray, destitute widow-ashram, the ghats (bathing areas along a river), and the chaotic crowds attending Gandhi's appearance. Moreover, Sidhwa expects some intellectual muscle from her readers. Although her stories are simple, their subtexts are richly instructive. Her lively characters thrash out personal and political issues. As Gandhi's train passes through the village, the prospect of rescue from punishing Hindu traditions seems conceivable. Modern India has journeyed far since 1938. In Water Sidhwa honors the awful fate of those once left behind.