For widows to step out of the shadows

The word 'widow' brings to the canvas of our mind an affrighted similitude of a lady with a saddened face, wearing a grayish brown sari, perhaps the only sari she owns. The elongated holes are visible in her earlobes that once were adorned with weighty gold and silver earrings. The right side of her nostril bares another gaping hole which was filled with a stone-studded nose-screw. Her arms are stark bare that not in the distant past were full of colourful and designer bangles made of glass, conch-shell and precious metals that would sparkle, jingle and tinkle at her slightest movement. And her neck no more can carry even a garland of cotton threads, let alone a precious gold necklace that she had gotten as a wedding gift from her own parents.
If she is a Hindu widow her head has always to remain shorn and shaven and she has to cover her bald head with the end of her frayed sari or an old 'gamchha' (cheap cotton napkin). A little boy, maybe her only son, always shadows her wherever she moves. She is debarred from smiling, taking spicy food, wearing blouse or brassieres. She is forbidden from doing or wearing anything that makes a woman look attractive. She must keep distance from the young, the fortunate and the married, lest her shadow, breathing, touch or sight should bring ominous evils for them like hers. Forget about putting a round vermillion paste on her forehead to which only a married woman has the right, she is not allowed to touch even the red ochre powder called 'kumkum' - the sign of grace and prosperity in Hindu community. And she is very lucky a widow compared to thousands of other widows as she has at least a shelter to sleep in amidst her relatives and can keep her son snuggled under her cover.
Compared to a Muslim widow a Hindu widow is way more unfortunate. Varanasi, Vrindaban and Haridwar in India are the places where, far from their relatives and well-wishers, those unfortunate Hindu widows have to spend the rest of their life with meagre earnings they can somehow manage singing hymns and chanting Lord Krishna's name in the temples in the hope that they would not be reincarnated back to this world with the same misfortune of widowhood.
This is the picture of uneducated widows who were married with uneducated and poor people in rural areas of Bangladesh and India.
A Bangladeshi girl is born with misfortune as an integrated part of her fate. She leaves her natal home at marriage to move into an alien home of her husband. There she all on a sudden faces a world full of unknown women, all having a position more privileged than her own. As a new bride she is supposed to respect and treat her mother-in-law, who is already in charge of the house-hold affairs, from a servile position. And, then she has to face her husband's sisters who are traditionally favoured by their mother over the young bride.  Unless her husband dotes on her as a henpecked sort, she is in a disadvantageous position where all the women are her masters.
More tormenting is the cold war she has to fight with her husband's elder brothers' wives who will jealously guard whatever powers and privileges that they have gained through their own tormenting years. When, by her own virtue of cleverness, guile, religious merit and wifely devotion, she starts gaining a little more power than her old mother-in-law, a little more command over her husband's sisters, who are by this time married off, it is the long-cherished moment for her to relax and look forward to a sunnier life. But, unfortunately, this is the time most of our girls lose their husbands either by their husbands' second marriage or by their death.
No literary work or documentary could ever capture the plight of Hindu widows as brilliantly as the 2005 film Water Deepa Mehta took eight years to make, braving opposition from different quarters who felt threatened to lose their traditional rights to oppress and deprive widows. Set in 1938, a period of undivided India under British colonial rule when most poor widows would have been consigned to live a grim life in the widows' ashrams in various parts of India, the film that was designed to expose evil side of Hindu cult faced fierce opposition from Hindu fundamentalists and the production had to shut down and move to Sri Lanka.
The lively eyes and innocuous facial expression of the eight-year-old Chuyia (Sarala), the film's main character as a child widow, and the tragic story with a poignant ending must well up your emotions and mist your eyes. Water, the latest feature film by Deepa Mehta and the last in her "elements trilogy", was screened at various international film festivals. Like the first two films in the trilogy-Fire (1996) and Earth (1999)-Water won huge praise and critical acclaim.
According to Hindu scriptures a widow has three options: She can marry her husband's younger brother; she can burn herself with her dead husband or she can lead a life of self-denial. In ancient times, and also in some sporadic cases a few years back, widows, mainly in India, would find it sacred to join their dead husbands on the pyre in a ritual called "Sati Daho". But such gruesome practice had been banned and is hardly heard nowadays.
Motivating widows for self-immolation or to lead solitary life in ashrams in the name of religion has actually been encouraged to deprive them from the property of their deceased husbands. Family members (usually the surviving brothers of the deceased) cloak their desires under the shadow of religion. The widows under societal pressure were made to self-immolate themselves. This served twin purposes; the family was no longer required to maintain the widow and her sacrifice ensured that the share of her deceased husband would revert to the surviving members.
Today, June 23, is International Widows Day (officially recognised by the United Nations in 2010). Officially no widow is immolating herself by jumping into her husband's pyre. But, unofficially widows have been enduring visible and invisible pains that are more painful than an instant death when they cannot remarry or afford an independent life. They have developed a kind of immunity to pains.
When pain is your constant companion you find it useless to complain, rather you don't know how to complain. When you don't complain the world is unaware of your simmering pains. You live and go to your grave with your pains unknown.
Once widowed, women in many developing countries, including Bangladesh, often confront a denial of inheritance and land rights. Widows are still evicted from their homes by their in-laws and even by their own parents and brothers. They are physically abused - some even killed - by members of their own family. For them, the loss of a husband is only the first trauma in a long-term ordeal. Widows are still thought to be cursed in our culture. Our society has increasingly owned up an attitude of utter derision towards widows when they ask for their right share.
Widowed mothers are forced to withdraw children from school and to rely on their labour. Daughters of widows suffer multiple deprivations, increasing their vulnerability to abuse. Strife, conflict, jealousy, and greed make the life of a widow unbearable.
Things have however improved for the educated widows who were married to educated men in noble families in urban areas. Fortunately, not many helpless widows are nowadays found in our society as their husbands' life longevity has greatly improved compared to the early part of the last century when men's average longevity was not more than 30.
Widows have the right to live with dignity. It's not their fault being a widow. It's not by choice but by chance. Young widows who have children are still forced not to marry but to lead a life in shadow and at the mercy of others.
Widows must be encouraged to remarry if they are young and wish to do so. No one has the right to take from them the right of dignified living. Instead of looking at them with disgrace and tinted eyes, we must be more compassionate to them.
The government should provide rehabilitation and economic independence to widows and increase the meagre widow allowance from Taka 300 to at least Taka 1,000. In Paschimbanga, a widow gets an allowance of Taka 750 and their government is planning to increase the allowance to a double amount.
Imagine, a widow sitting alone in a darkened room. Her face conveys a language of weariness beyond her years and is smeared from the tears coursing down her cheeks. Her beauty has frayed at all her edges. She is now torn apart by all the roles she has played in her life: daughter, sister, wife, lover, and mother. In such solitary moments when the house is quiet and she is left with only herself, a voice rises within her: "Where am I heading with my life? Do I know who I really am? What have I lived for? Do I know what I really want?"
Her dreams are all evaporated into smoke, and she feels locked by barriers beyond her control. Behind her tear-washed smile there is an inner ache and piercing cry for help. But those around her cannot hear her screaming plea and the relentless storm that is raging within her. People are going about their lives, not noticing that a lonely lady is burning, thunders rumbling in her soul.
The time has come for the widows to step out of the shadows of their life.         
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