Never wished anyone bad
Ill-luck, curse, how am I?
Love colours, jewellery
Can’t wear and eat what I wish? Why?
Degraded to dark-room
Why none touch or love me anymore?
Always wished for his long-life
Why am held responsible for his death?
Please understand, I’ve always loved him
Then, why must I suffer for that?
With a population of over 1 billion, it is estimated that there are about 50 million widows in India. Mostly in the rural parts of India, widows are looked down upon as disgraceful, unlucky, even cursed.
Girls in India are often married off at a young age, instead of being educated. In case of adverse situations like death of spouse, they usually lack the required skills to support themselves or the knowledge to fight for their basic rights.
In the olden days, widows were expected to jump on the funeral pyre of their husbands to commit a practice called sati. Though the practice was outlawed in 1829, widows still undergo ritual humiliations.
The mark of marriage sindoor that a married woman wears is sometimes substituted in a widow by a vertical ash smear from the top of her forehead to the top of her nose. In extreme cases, a widow’s very presence is considered so ominous that even her shadow is not let to fall on a married woman lest her dreadful destiny befall the other woman!
A widow is quite often made to wear white and to give up wearing fine clothes and jewelry. The unintelligent reasoning is that this is necessary so as to not arouse any carnal desire in other men. In some traditions, they are forced to shave off their heads. Sometimes she is even blamed for her husband’s death. The so called belief then, and probably even now, was that the wife’s bad karma caused the death of her husband.
Widows from joint families are vulnerable to abuse by in-laws and at times evicted from home. The widow rarely succeeds in inheriting her husband’s property which is often usurped by greedy relatives. She is sometimes denied the right to remarry. The poor woman is shunned, and left to live, on her own, a sad life of impoverishment. She is ostracized and is treated as a burden by society. In some cases, widows are not allowed to attend their own children’s weddings because they are so despised in certain cultures!
All this is carried out not necessarily for religious reasons, instead, most likely because of certain savage cultures and traditions!
The 1856 Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act gave women the legal right to remarry and the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 gave women the same inheritance rights as men. Sadly, those rights are not always put into practice. Then there are disheartening clauses like, under Section 2, "a Hindu widow, on remarriage, shall forfeit her right to the property which she has inherited from her husband." I am not aware if this Section 2 has been repealed by the Hindu Succession Act.
But there is hope, thanks to some organizations and social activists who think of ‘service before self’ and endeavour to give status to widows as full-fledged individuals. Dr. Mohini Giri is one of them working on changing the mind-set of the society in this regard.
This post is written to bring to attention on the plight of some widows in certain parts of India. For some cheerful news, I invite you to read my post on Orchha wherein I have given a glimpse of how successful and liberated some Indian women are.
Excerpt:
How could I discuss my thoughts with her on matters like though a majority of women in India think and live a kind of life like she did, there is, however, a small percentage that are thankfully liberated and have been so successful that they have won several accolades in every imaginable area - to choose a few fields like in politics, sports, justice, music, activism and service, brains, beauty or films or a combination of them, or for that matter sheer selfless social service.
This post is inspired by Spiritwoman, a blogger I stumbled across last month, who made me realize, while exchanging comments at this post, that the world is not wicked.
We're empowered
To change the world
No excuses
For lack of solutions
Take individual responsibility
For what's happening
It must be an objective
Not an ideal
To have a world
Without war
Not fear nightmares
Instead make peace a reality
Let's contribute to world peace
With our actions
Let's believe in ourselves
And start right…now!
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
- Mother Theresa
She was blind,
Tirelessly he described,
Nature’s beauty, rainbow,
Deep in love,
Happy they are,
In every way,
Except one:
She longed to see,
Like he did.
Then one day,
He arranged it,
And she saw!
He was blind!!
Shocked,
She furiously yelled, “Liar.”
Heartbroken,
He departed,
Leaving a note:
“Take care of my eyes.”
She was blind. Tirelessly he described nature’s beauty and rainbow. Deeply in love, they were happy in every way except one: She longed to see, like he did. One day, he arranged it and she saw: He was blind! Shocked, she furiously yelled, “Liar.” Heartbroken, he departed leaving a note: “Take care of my eyes.”
Picture borrowedThen there are others:
Trust me, I did my best.
Ray Kemp
Conceived, implored, employed, adored, retired, ignored.
Joy MacKenzie
Four Weddings, Three kids, then cancer.
Gillian Johnson
Aspirations compromised by procrastination, then children.
Harry Beighton
If only I had turned left.
Robin Pickering
Which one do you like out of these? Now, for my personal taste, six-word composition is far too short, though the gems above are impressive.
These days I'm in a mood for writing Flash55. I shall choose only those words that are absolutely essential, get rid of the frills and come out with an essence of an interesting scenario, or a message, if not a story. And yes, let it be prose or poetry, whichever is easier for you.
Let us not think writing simply is not elegant. Beauty, most often, lies in the simplest of things.
Would you like to try this out? Just 55 words. No excuse of lack of time. Let's take up the challenge.
I already have, and have posted the following two:
Have a wonderful day.
Through icy-winds
For daily free meal
Raj hobbles
Tugs his warm coat
Kind soul's donation!
Mugger pounces
Wields knife
Demands wallet
Raj gives, sees
Another hungry person!
Raj hollers
At darting figure
Plucking hurriedly
His only coat, gives
Saying:
"Friend, for meal
Not enough in wallet,
Keep this,
It should keep you warm."
Icy-winds howl!
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
The Dalai Lama
Chilling news, disbelief
Just too choked to weep
Lifeless eyes
Only twenty-one
Lingering innocence
Life of bereavement
She hardly grieved
But collected
And subjugated
To age-old customs
Plonked around women
And hired lamentators
Veil tossed, arms tugged
Bangles pulled off, broken
And off the forehead
With one violent sweep
Her Sindoor is wiped off !
Hindu women use vermillion known as Sindoor, said to represent strength and love, only after they are married. It is applied as a line filling the dividing part of a woman’s hair or as a decorative dot on the forehead. Sindoor is a sign of marriage in Hinduism.
