SikhSpectrum.com Quarterly Issue No.22, November 2005
Widows of Vrindavan
Zoya Zaidi In the age of Kalpana Chawla, Aishwariya Rai and Sonia Gandhi it is sad to know that heinous practices like discrimination of widows still exist, that there are fourteen thousand odd widows living in institutionalized hell in Vridavan in Mathura (UP, India). Marginalized and ostracized by the so-called tolerant society in the land of Gandhi, whose constitution is formulated by Ambedkar. There are a total of three million widows in India who are considered “ill omen”, living a life worse than India’s untouchables.
In medieval India, widows were made to shave their heads off, wear coarse white clothes, eat fugal meals (minus spices, believed to excite sexual desires), which they prepared themselves, and sleep on bare floors or at best on rough mats. For them singing, dancing, and even humming was prohibited. Sadly such practices exist even today. Some of the widows in Vrindavan are childhood-widows, perpetually mourning for a husband they lost at an age when they did not even understand the meaning of the word husband. Here is a poem I wrote on the plight of these poor women that I would like to share with the readers of SikhSpectrum.com.
The article Women In White: India's Widows echoes my sentiments. I am sending the poem Widows of Vrindavan for publication in SikhSpectrum, which is a serious journal that raises issues on social justice and equality, a commodity that is becoming rare in today’s world.
Gita Devi, a 77-year-old widow from Katmandu, was wed in an arranged marriage at age 5; her husband died one month later.
Like most traditional Hindus of her generation, she never remarried.
The Associated Press
Widows of Vrindavan
There are fourteen thousand of them,
Carrying the ghosts of unforgettable past,
Singing bhajans: “Mere to Girdhar Gopal” To a God who never smiles on them,
The Widows of Vrindavan
Marginalized by society,
Hiding in the garb of piety,
They perform their daily Pooja chores,
Trying to hide their bleeding sores,
Buried deep within their souls,
Souls, hollowed to their cores;
Overlooked by every one
The Widows of Vrindavan .
Married at twelve
Widowed at fourteen,
She mourns for a husband
She hardly knew,
That too at a time
She could not comprehend
The meaning of the word: Husband,
Life has taught her, at every bend-
Like a living “curse”, she on others descend-
Paying for someone else’s death,
By a life which is living hell,
Paying penance for her “sin”,
She never committed on the nearest of kin,
Living with a sense of guilt-
Imposed on her by the religious guild-,
She often wonders:
“Won’t it be better to be killed?
To be burnt on the “funeral pyre”,
Then to burn in this living fire,
Of guilt and sin,
And nameless desire?”
Shorn and shunned by every one,
The Widows of Vrindavan .
Considered a “bad omen”,
The Widows of Vrindavan .
Age-old heinous practices of society,
Perpetuated under the garb of Piety-
Though, declared “crimes” by our sense of propriety-
Still, continue to erode, I say with anxiety,
The very fabric of our society,
When man’s hunger and insatiety,
Of ruling over the “women of notoriety”,
Continues unabated, as if he is Almighty.
In twenty-first century still,
She is considered a “Bad Omen,
The widows of Vrindavan .
With Radha mocking,
Govinda making fun;
The widows of Vrindavan .
“Mere to Girdhar Gopal” (My God and Lord is Krishna),
My future dark and dun,
“O When my savior, Kalki,
Will you ever come?”
Sing the Widows of Vrindavan .
This poem may not be re-produced without express permission of the author.
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