India's expanding city of widows

New report reveals that poverty, not devotion, is turning more Indian women into social pariahs.

from the August 9, 2007 edition

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Rukmani, who goes by one name and is "60 or 70," shakes her head vigorously when she says she has no children. But a moment later, she mumbles bitterly that she is a "hot-headed woman" and it is her fault that things went wrong with her daughter-in-law.

Widows have come to Vrindavan since the 16th century, when it became known as the place where Krishna, the blue-skinned incarnation of Vishnu, danced as a child. Here they pray that this most personable of the Hindu gods, often depicted as a cute, plump-cheeked toddler, will grant them moksha, or freedom, from the cycle of birth and rebirth. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified the deity of which Krishna is the incarnation.]

But more than that, they hope that the material benefits of Vrindavan, with its 5,000 temples and numerous alms-giving ashrams, will allow them to survive a little longer in this life.

As poor as she is, Rukmani is comparatively well off. At Aamir Bari, the 110 residents are encouraged to wear the brightly colored saris of their former lives. They watch television, cook, and gossip.

More important, Aamir Bari is the only ashram in Vrindavan that provides three meals a day. Elsewhere, widows must earn their bread by singing in temples.

At 3 p.m. in the center of town, more than 1,000 women in grubby white saris shuffle into the dimly lit hall of a temple for the second of two lengthy hymn-singing shifts.

First they queue up to receive a small plastic token from the temple. Then they sit in rows on the floor, facing a shrine to Krishna and Radha, his beautiful lover. Several women are lying down. One, with trembling hands, unfolds a sheet of waterproof plastic and carefully arranges it beneath her.

And then the singing begins: 3-1/2 hours of "Hare Rama, Hare Krishna" to the roll of drums and clashing of cymbals. After the song, the women slowly rise and line up again, this time exchanging each coupon for three rupees (about 7 cents) from the temple's cashier.

"It's a kind of torture, sitting there for hours," says Maduri Devi, a feisty white-haired resident at the government-funded Meera Sahbhagini Mahila ashram, where she sits on a charpoy, girlishly swinging her legs.

Though Ms. Devi and her 300-plus fellow residents are given a daily food ration, it is not enough to live on, says the widow of a homeopathic doctor from Patna in Bihar.

"I have lived a much better life than this," she says proudly. "But many of the women here are poorer than me and for them, I don't think this life is so bad."

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