VRINDAVAN (India): The desperate plight of Indian widows depicted in the Oscar-nominated film “Water,” set in the 1930s, remains almost unchanged in this dusty pilgrimage temple town where thousands of them dwell.
The women, cast off by their families who see them as bad luck and a financial drain, sing hymns and beg in Vrindavan, known as the “City of Widows,” 135 kilometres south of the Indian capital New Delhi.
“God sent us into this world alone and we will leave alone,” said Hemata Mukherji, as she shuffled toward the Shri Bhagwan prayer house where she earns six rupees a day and a meagre portion of rice and daal for singing “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna” for eight hours.
Sixty-two-year-old Mukherji, dressed in a grubby white “widow’s” sari, said she had six children but none wanted to take her in, so she came from Kolkata seven years ago to live in Vrindavan on the banks of the Yamuna River.
“They didn’t want me,” Mukherji said before entering the dimly-lit ashram where officials say more than 1,000 widows sing hymns to Lord Krishna in shifts to achieve “moksha” or liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
Vrindavan lies near the place where the Lord Krishna is believed to have spent his childhood. Many of the women have lived there for decades.
“They are poor women, they are sent off by their families. They have no money. What are they to do?” asked prayer house official Madan Gopal to the sound of the widows singing and cymbals clashing.
The sight of the widows of Vrindavan, many stick thin and struggling to walk, is at odds with India’s new image as an emerging economic powerhouse, said Mohini Giri, who runs a widows’ refuge in Vrindavan.
“The stories are still the same. The children abandon them,” Giri said.
“She is not wanted. The easiest thing is to throw her out,” Giri said. “She only has status as a wife.” India has at least 33 million widows according to census figures, the most in the world.
Many have tales of rejection as the stigma of widowhood is still strong in some traditional quarters and they are obliged to shave their heads and dress in white.
The treatment of widows is such a controversial topic that Indian-born Deepa Mehta was forced to abandon the filming of her Oscar-nominated film “Water” in India, finally completing it in Sri Lanka in 2004.
“Water” premiered at the Toronto film festival in 2005 but even after the film won acclaim from foreign audiences, Indian distributors were reluctant to show it.—AFP