"Set in 1938 colonial India against the backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi's rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, a child-bride who is abandoned at a widow's ashram after the demise of her fifty-year-old husband. There, she is forced to live out a life of penitence until death." "Unwilling to accept her fate, Chuyia becomes a catalyst for change in the lives of the widows. When her friend, the beautiful widow-prostitute Kalyani, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the delicate balance of power within the ashram." "Water offers an examination of the lives of widows in colonial India, but ultimately it is a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith and redemption."--BOOK JACKET.