According to India’s law at that time, 1930s, women have three options after their husband die—burn with their husband, remarry to their husbands’ brother, stay widow until they die. When a man died, his widow would be forced to spend the rest of her life in a widow's ashram, an institution for widows to make amends for the sins from her previous life that supposedly caused her husband's death. What other people feel about widows is a bad luck.
“For how long?” Chuyia asked her father when he told her that she had to stay in a widow refuge, became a widow when she was only eight, when she was just a naïve girl didn’t have chance to experience how wonderful a life would be yet.
However, she is not the only person too young to be a widow in that refuge since the marriage of young girls to older men was commonplace in parts of
Another widow, Kalyani, young, beautiful like an angel, has a beautiful mind as well, falling in love with Narayan, a young and charming upper-class follower of Mahatma Gandhi and of Gandhism. But fate makes a joke on them; Narayan's father is the one who had used Kalyani as a prostitute. When Narayan comes to the refuge and still want to marry Kalyani, who had drowned herself.
Then, Madhumati, the manager of the ashram, send Chuyia to Narayan's father’s house to replace Kalyani. In order to protect Chuyia, Didi, a 40s widow, the incarnation of justice in the refuge but still stay under the law and reality, sending her to Narayan when he is leaving on the train with Gandhi. While the train is leaving, the camera stops and focuses on Didi’s face. I can’t help but wonder what will she do next? Go back to the refuge and spend the rest of her life there or go fight for herself, go fight for women’s right. Even though the law that widow can remarry had passed, what if people ignore the law not suit them?
