Diasporic Home: Existence of Widows in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Water

Abstract

Water, published in 2006, brings to light the contentious issues with patriarchy, widowhood, and child prostitution in India prior to the partition. This essay focuses on how widows adjust to life in Ashram, a frequently visited destination on their migratory routes. The main protagonist in the novel Water, Chuyia, is an example of an immigrant who is compelled to abandon everything connected to their own culture and adopt the new standard of living in the host community. The author provides voice to oppressed women, especially widows, and demonstrates how “husbandless” women are stigmatized and suffer heinous abuse, which causes them to feel alienated. A close illustration of the caste systems in the political and historical frameworks of the novel will be done in order to discuss the identity crisis of the diasporic character in Water. This will reveal the fundamental power relations among male-dominated heteronormative discourses that produce male dominance and make women’s dominance a suitable cultural norm. I contend that widows’ homemaking is a dynamic process that entails continual concern in connection to identity performance and adjustments in this research, rather than being a static replica of their prior houses. I use the concepts of cultural authenticity and identity development to support modern notions of the diasporic home. My study proposes a fundamental tool for analyzing widows, which is an immigrant tale, and gives a novel perspective that undermines facile associations between homemaking and established identities.