Transcript for the Piece Audio version of RN Documentary: A Life of Ashes: Widows in India

PROGRAMME: vox humana
TITLE: A Life of Ashes: Widows in India
PROG NO: 1007520
PROD/PRESENTER: Dheera Sujan
DATE OF B?CAST: 2+3 Sept 2006
DATE OF PRODUCTION: 20 July 2006
DURATION 29?30

You?re listening to Vox Humana from Radio Netherlands. In this programme, ?A life of Ashes? Dheera Sujan looks at the lives of widows in India.

Music ? ?Rise? Anoushka Shankar tr 4 Naked 2?00
Comp + Perf by Anoushka Shankar. ANGEL Records 0946 3 54950 27

Soon after my 7th birthday my father died, leaving my 37 year old mother a widow. A few months after his death, she did the unthinkable: She handed in her resignation from her good job, packed off a few bits of furniture and her books, said an emotional goodbye to her close knit family and accepted a job offer that would take her, my five year old sister and I to Australia. It was 1969 and Australia may as well have been the moon.

Despite frequent trips back to India, her family never recovered from the loss of their only daughter, at not seeing my sister and I growing up. For her part, she never really got over the guilt at leaving them. Years later when I asked her what had prompted her into this move she replied simply: I didn?t want to be a widow in India.

It?s taken me 40 years to fully understand what she meant by that remark. Perhaps it?s this very remark that lead me decades later to find out for myself what it means to be a widow in India. Perhaps it?s the fact that I recently adopted a small daughter who?s 24 year old mother gave her up to an orphanage because she was a widow and had no means of supporting herself.

My mother wasn?t forced to give up her children. She was from the middle class, she was educated and therefore financially independent, and she had a supportive family. She was one of the lucky few. Statistics paint a grim picture for women not so lucky. In a country where more than 10% of its female population is widowed, only a tiny proportion of that number is affluent enough to have escaped the considerable societal taboos. Some women?s groups estimate that more than 40 million women in India live a life so wretched that a widow is sometimes referred to as ?pram? - creature, because it was only her husband?s presence that gave her human status. In some regional languages, a widow is not to be referred to as she but as it, while in others the word for widow doubles as an abuse, or is barely differentiated from the word prostitute.
Of India?s estimated 40 million widows, fewer than 28% are eligible for pensions, and of that number, less than 11% actually receive the payments they?re entitled to.

Moh ?12
You have to give up non veg.. can?t have

Moitri Chatterjee grew up in a Bengali Brahmin community - widowhood restrictions amongst Brahmins is particularly severe,

Moh ? give up food ?38
For example onions.. for lunch

I went to meet her in Kolkuta and, as we sat near her monsoon spattered verandah I found her to be a fount of knowledge about the many cultural restrictions placed on widows in India. And it?s not only society forcing restrictions on its widows ? often it was the widows themselves who insisted on following the most rigid interpretations of the traditions.
3?30

Mohitri ?food and sex taboos 1?01
There were widows who wouldn?t even eat food cooked ?.remain pure

When a woman?s husband dies, she usually gives up wearing coloured clothes and starts wearing instead, plain white saris. My mother was forbidden from following this custom by her mother ? who said that she was too young - and so like a minority of younger widows, she continued wearing her jewellery and coloured silk saris after my father?s death. And I?m glad that she didn?t have to assume the burden of looking purposefully unattractive for the rest of her life.
5

Moh ? clothes ?37
You must not look physically attractive.. how many widows laughed

As for the rural heartland of India, where the bulk of the population still lives, a woman recently widowed who has been living with her husband?s joint family may suddenly find that she?s no longer welcome in their house. If her parents don?t have the resources to take her and her children in, she will be forced to fend for herself.
In a small poor village in West Bengal, I met Nargis who still has a small room in her in laws house where she and her son cook, eat and sleep.
6?30

Tape 3 Tr 1 Bengali
V/O
I?m not sure how old I am, or how old I was when my parents arranged my marriage ? I think I was about 15 or 16 then. My son is now 8 years old, so maybe I?m now about 23 or 24.
I didn?t want to marry early, but my family couldn?t afford to keep me any longer, and they couldn?t afford a decent dowry so they married me off to a sick man ? my husband had TB, but he could still work - he used to buy fish from the wholesale market and then bring it here to this village and sell it. 5 years ago, the TB killed him and since then I?ve to do whatever work I can to feed my son. I live in a small room in my in laws house. I cook separately for my son and myself and if I can find work, we eat one meal a day. My in laws are very poor and can?t support me, though my husband?s brothers who are working as laborers in Kolkuta do come once a year and give my son a few clothes or such.
Bengali

I work in people?s houses, boiling rice or roasting and puffing rice. Just this morning I did this job. I made 12 kilos of puffed rice, and for that they gave me 1 kilo of rice and ? a kilo of puffed rice.
8

Nargis mentions that she knows there are government schemes and food subsidies for people with the tag BPL ? Below Poverty Line ? but you have to have connections with the ruling party to get a BPL card. Nargis has no connections, and has never received any kind of help.
Nargis is a Muslim and so is not forbidden to remarry, but she says she won?t marry again because she is afraid that her son will become a nonentity in the new family. And that means that she is destined to struggle on in this hand to mouth existence until her son is old enough to earn money to keep them both going. A heavy burden for the young boy she?s brought with her, who stares expressionlessly at us while we talk. The boy doesn?t go to school because his mother can?t afford to send him.

Old age and widowhood is a double curse for the financially dependant.
Anwara Bibi is testament to that. She?s lived in this same poor village all her life, though she can?t say how old she is. She looks well into her 80?s but there?s a chance she?s a good ten years younger than I guess her to be. Deprivation ages people faster.
When I ask her how long she?s been widowed Anwara Bibi replies Long.
Most adults around here can?t remember seeing her husband, so it?s probably been 30-35 years since she?s been on her own. Today all of her 9 children are grown and gone to the city in search of unskilled work.
Ancient and emaciated, she squats patiently on the ground, refusing all offers of a chair or a glass of water. On the verandah where we?re sitting, a flat basket of lentils lies drying in the sun. Before I turn on the microphone, she shows me what she?s stowed carefully away in one corner of her limp white sari - 4 grains of yellow lentils. She cracks a grin revealing the one yellowed tooth left in her mouth and tells me that she noticed that they?d fallen out of the basket onto the ground. ?I can?t see any food going to waste? she tells me. ?I?ll put them in my cooking pot this evening?.
10

Anwara 1 Beng 2?37 ? 2?56 / 22?00 / 4?36 -4?53 (stitch together)
I never buy clothes she says ? my relatives in the village take turns buying me a sari once a year. If I have no food, then I go to someone?s house and sit and maybe they realize that I?m hungry and they give me something. As a principle I never ask for anything ? if they offer me something, I take it. ?But you had so many children? I say to her, ?why don?t they take care of you??, she tells me that they?re too poor, but even if they could take her in, she wouldn?t want to live with them. She feels freer this way and says that if she lived with her children, she?d have to live according to their dictates.

Anwara 2 19?30 ? Bengali
I reach out to grip Anwara Bibi?s fragile bony knee in sympathy and she pats my hand reassuringly, consolingly almost ? ?I have no grief or sorrow. I understand how it is and carry on. I?m happy and just waiting for death.?

The different states and cultures which make up India all have slightly differing traditions when it comes to ideas on marriage and widowhood. Bengal, the cultural heartland of the nation has traditionally been one of the severest in its treatment of widows, made even crueller because for centuries, it?s widely practiced the tradition of child marriage.
Mohitri Chatterjee again.
11?15

Mohitri ? Beng child widows ?54
Among Bengalis you know?. Husband?s house

MUSIC (wedding fanfare) 220602. The Wedding
Tr 22 Raga Bhupalam. Trad. Perf: TM Krishnamurti PAN 2000B CD. ?30

In traditional parts of Indian society, girl children are brought up to believe that their greatest achievement will be to marry and bear sons; that their wedding day will be the highest point of their existence because it heralds their new life with their husband who as they are taught, must be revered as a god. That?s a lot of pressure for a young frightened girl to bear, but still nothing compared to the trauma of being a child, newly married, and then suddenly widowed.

Mohitri Aunt - 1?01
I had an aunt and she was married like that,?participating in all that
14

In 2004 the Indian government raised the age of marriage from 14 to 18 but in the rural areas especially, most girls are expected to marry in their mid teens and sometimes they?re married to older men, which means that their chance of early widowhood can be high.

Reasons ?40
In west Bengal 39% of marriages are child marriages..one less mouth to feed
15

Aloka Pathok was married off as a child because her parents were superstitious. They had lost several children to illness sometime after they turned 11, so they thought that if they married off their surviving daughter before she was 11, in effect, making her someone else?s daughter, she would be spared. So when Aloka was 11 she was married off to a man of 25. She spent the first few years of her marriage moving from her parents house to that of her husband and his family.

Tr 16 ?41 + ?52 ? 1?03 / 2?32 Beng ? aloka 1

It was difficult for me at that age to be at my husband?s house ? he used to beat me because he didn?t understand why I was so unhappy. And also my in-laws tricked my parents ? when they came to arrange the marriage, they said they had lots of land, a nice house, but when I got married and came to my husband?s house I saw that they were very poor, and there wasn?t even enough food to go round.
16

4?30 ? 5?15 Bengali - aloka 2

I spent long periods of time with my own family but sometimes I went to my husband?s house and that?s when I got pregnant with my two children.

Today Aloka whose thin worn face looks a lot older than her 39 years is supported by her married daughter and her 15 year old son who?s working as a labourer in Mumbai. She is happy that her children are looking after her, but worries that its too much of a strain on her son especially who will soon be old enough to marry and start a family of his own.
17

Moh - varanasi 1?05
You see in India? ....bengali widow

SFX ? Benares Disc 3 Tr 3 BELLS - then singing starts +-1?25

OUTSIDE - LOUD
This is Benares ? now called Varanassi. It?s time for the evening prayers and the banks of the river, cut with the steps known as ghats are crowded with so many people its hard to take it all in. At one particularly large ghat, giant platforms have been built on the water from which are seated, dignitaries, religious leaders and musicians. They?re facing the thousands of people sitting on the steps watching the ceremony. On the banks of the river, standing on cotton mats, a line of handsome young priests in brilliant saffron clothes are performing rituals. There?s a chaos of onlookers, children with flower offerings, stalls laden with food, beads, garlands and oil lamps.
The Ganges flows at the foot of the ghats ? this is the holiest of India?s holy rivers. People come here from all over the country. They come in their thousands, to bathe, to pray and sometimes to die here

SINGING UP and x fade with water
19
Ajit ( 1 clip with water sound in btwn over which have to read sc)
Its considered to be auspicious to die in Ben? and rebirth ?.. water

OUTSIDE - SOFTER
My guide is Ajit Singh and he?s taken me on a boat ride along the Ganges where the black night and silence of the river has replaced the noise and bustle of the ghats we?ve left behind. Our boat passes the famous Burning Ghat. Several fires burn on the platform near the river.

Ajit ?46
Another dead body? funeral pyre

Fade out with water
20?

For centuries, widows have flocked to the holy cities of Varanassi, Vrindavan and Mathura. Some come voluntarily, but most have been either squeezed out of their own homes by their families, or were brought here and then abandoned. The city is crammed with dingy over crowded guest houses and ashrams, and for the elderly widows who inhabit them, these places are just the final waiting room before death comes calling.

Sfx ? mukti bhavan sfx - mb1
?40 ? caretaker talking to Ajit

OUTSIDE
With Ajit, I visit Mukti Bhavan ? an ashram he?s seen so full, that people had to sleep outside because there was no other room. But this morning it looks all but deserted. There?s what?s clearly a wrapped dead body on the verandah.
The old caretaker who comes out to meet us tells us that this old lady was the last remaining tenant of the ashram ? she died early this morning.
21

Sfx ? m b2
2?26 ? 10 rupees ? talking about money and what they need to bring

It costs 10 rupees ? about 2 cents a day to live here he says
Sfx mukti mb 3
+ 3?46 ? puja

For that, they get a room, and someone to conduct prayers in the morning and evening. The tenants are expected to provide everything else themselves.
Ajit persuades him to let us look inside.

SFX - 4?52 ? inside rooms mb 4
4?58 ? door unlocking.. + 5?44 ? 6?00

There are only empty rooms totally bare except for hard wooden cots, devoid of even a mat. The walls were whitewashed once but now are grimy and damp. The only well kept room in the building is the small shrine we passed on the way in. A saffron clothed priest with Brahmin marks on his forehead was cleaning the many statues and framed pictures of the Hindu gods displayed there.
The widows who come here are expected to bring everything with them ? besides their clothes, they have to bring their own food and bedding.

?52 (in mb4)
They have to bring family member with them

If a widow has no family member who wants to come to see them through to the end of their days, then perhaps they come with a servant.
The only well kept room in the building is the small shrine attended by a priest wearing a saffron lungi and Brahmin marks on his forehead.
For the old women who come here to die the ashram provides provides someone only to tend to their spiritual karma, not their bodily existence while they?re still alive.

Sfx mb5? 7?39
outside again ? fade and keep under next script (cutting out me talking of money)
22?45

The lady who died this morning apparently had a well off grandson who was a doctor in the neighbouring town, but she came here with no one except the old woman servant who was with her when she died, and now sits by the body on the verandah. Tonight the body will go to the ghats. If there?s enough money for a decent cremation, she will be burned like the bodies we saw last night. If not, then she will be sent to the electric crematorium the government has set up ? the process is cheaper, but it doesn?t accumulate the spiritual credit points of being burnt on a pyre.

MUSIC ? ?Gyatri Mantra? Trad. Perf: Anuradha Paudwal and Kavita Paudwal
SSKNCD 01/25 Janta

Varanasi is dotted with bhajanashrams ? temples where widows come to sing religious songs. For a four hour shift of chanting, they receive a cup of rice and 7 cents ? a meager reward, but for elderly women who have no other form of economic support, the bhajanashrams are often their only means of survival.
23?30

Disc 7, Tr 6 HINDI -Gulab Devi
Gulab Devi?s husband died 12 years ago and she came to Varanasi for her moksha.
She wakes every morning at 4, cleans her house, does her prayers. She eats one meal a day ? no meat, onions, or garlic because they?re not pure foods. There?s nothing she wants except to die.

It was also commonly known but little discusssed that in the so called ?widow cities? of Varanasi and Vrindavan young widows were often forced into prostitution. The subject though is strictly taboo and the people I met in Varanasi insisted that this just didn?t happen here anymore. It?s true that child widows are rarer these days but the sexual exploitation of younger women still continues behind tightly closed doors.
A few years ago, filmmaker Deepa Mehta tried to shoot a film here about just this subject. The film ?Water? was violently sabotaged by hindu fundamentalists who said she was portraying Hinduism in a bad light. The film was later shot in Sri Lanka and has already had a public release but its left a mark on Varanasi. People are suspicious of journalists and no one wants to talk about the sexual abuse of young widows.
Hindu fundamentalists also objected when Mother Teresa?s sisters bought a house in Varanasi and opened it to the city?s abandoned widows.

Father Dil Raj 1?05 (poss cut) / Ajit ? this is Dheera from Dutch radio + SOUND
I?m father Dil Raj.. gone, over
25?30

Father Dil Raj takes me to inside and I meet Margeret, painfully thin, lying on a cot. Her leg is broken and she can only move with difficulty. She tells me she?s 75 years old

Margeret 1?04
I used to do work in houses? happy death that?s all

Mother Teresa?s home is not a fancy place by any stretch of the imagination. But its clean and there?s a cheerful comraderie between the patients and Sisters who are all hard at work. A very different atmosphere from the government home in Durgakund I visited next. It took me days to get the permission I needed to enter here but once I did, I could immediately see why the government officers in charge of such places are not keen on publisizing themselves. There are a dozen staff milling aimlessly about, but the place shows no sign of maintanence. The filthy dark rooms have a hard bunk at each corner ? each bunk is the only domain of its resident who sits on it, sleeps on it, and stores her meager possessions above or under it.

These women receive 400 rupees a month - about 8 euros for food and medicine. There?s no central canteen in the home so each individual cooks her own food on a small primus stove, and cleans her own utensils. There?s no kitchen ? they cook on the floor next to their bunks.

Of all the pitiful lives I?ve been coming across this collection of souls seems to me the worst of all., The conditions are the most squalid made more shaming by the fact that this is under the aegis of the government.
27?30

Dis 7 Tr 10 - Hindi
Here?s Priti Yadha Bhai from Uttar Pradesh. She separated from her husband after only 10 days of marriage. She?s in her 60?s now and has been living in this place for many years.

Tr 8 Sindhi
This is Geeta Devi who beamed at me when she discovers that I?m a Sindhi just like her. She hugged me, calls me her granddaughter. She used to work in people?s homes, as an ayah ? taking care of their children, till she couldn?t work anymore. Her stepbrothers brought her here.

Geeta ?

At first she insisted she?s happy here, but when my staff escort who followed me in lost interest in our conversation, her insistence dissolved. I?m here she said because I had no option

Geeta crying 12?02
I don?t want anything she wept. I just ask God to take me away quickly. I?ve had enough of life.

Malti Mishra ? Hindi end

Tr 14 Malti Mishra
This is Malti Mishra ? she was a cook in a private home. When she became too old to work, her employer brought her here. When I asked her if she had any wishes, she said that she burnt all her wishes on her husban?d funeral pyre. I eat she said because I have to keep my body going but I have no wish to keep living, I?m just waiting for death.

Tr 4 Anoushka (details as above) 1?00 ? till end

Loneliness is a tragic but universal fact of life for elderly people all around the world. But in India I found that the personal loneliness of so many of these women was compounded by their position in society. Women not lucky enough to be born financially independent or to have a family who cared for them, live a marginalized life, excluded from just about anything that makes it worthwhile.
I know my mother and perhaps thousands like her didn?t face the desperate economic straits that the majority of widows in India face today. And I?ll never know the real reasons why my daughter?s mother gave her up. But I do know that for both these women who?ve played such an important role in my life, widowhood was a shadow that profoundly influenced their actions and their lives.

A Life of Ashes was produced by Dheera Sujan for Radio Netherlands. Thanks go to Ajit and Manju Singh, and the NGO, Guria in Varanassi.
If you?d like to comment on this or any other Radio Netherlands programme, you can email us at RNW.nl

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Music ? ?Rise? Anoushka Shankar tr 4 Naked 2?00
Comp + Perf by Anoushka Shankar. ANGEL Records 0946 3 54950 27

MUSIC ? ?Gyatri Mantra? Trad. Perf: Anuradha Paudwal and Kavita Paudwal
SSKNCD 01/25 Janta

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My mother became a widow at the age of 37. Soon after, she packed up her children and her belongings and left India for a job in Australia. 40 years later, her family still hasn?t really recovered from losing us, and I think she?s never stopped feeling guilty for leaving them. When I asked her why she?d made such a drastic move at a time when women just didn?t do that kind of thing, she replied simply that she didn?t want to be a widow in India.

And a quick glance at the statistics is enough to understand what she meant by that remark. My mother was educated, from the middle class and supported by a loving and close knit family. She was one of a very lucky minority, and even then, she found the restrictions unbearable enough to want to leave.

Think then of the life of a woman like Nargis who lives in a poor village in West Bengal. She was married off in her teens to a man already diagnosed with TB. Her parents couldn?t afford a decent dowry so they settled for the first marriage offer that came their way for their daughter. Her husband died a couple of years later, leaving her a mother and a widow in her early 20?s. Today she supports herself and her young son by working in people?s houses.

It was not yet 10 am but the sun and the humidity made the simple act of sitting an effort. ?I just came from someone?s house,? she said tiredly as her silent son looked expressionlessly at us from her lap. ?I roasted 12 kilos of rice and made it into puffed rice and for that work they gave me 1 kilo of uncooked rice and half a kilo of puffed rice.? When she gets work, she and her son eat one meal a day. The pair live in a small room in her in-laws? house who are too poor themselves to help her with anything more, so she has to feed and clothe her son on her own.

There are more than 40 million widows in India ? 10% of the country?s female population. And for the majority of these women, life is what some have described as a
?living sati?, a reference to the now outlawed practice of widow burning. Only 28% of the widows in India are eligible for pensions, and of that number, less than 11% actually receive the payments to which they?re entitled. If a woman is not financially independent, she?s at the mercy of her in laws and her parents. And if they don?t have the will or the resources to take care of her and her children, she?s on her own.

Hindu widows especially, are faced with a battery of societal taboos; the general rule of thumb is that the higher their caste, the more restrictions widows face. Traditionally when a man dies, his widow is expected to renounce all earthly pleasures. Widows should no longer look attractive, and are expected to wear only simple white saris for the rest of their lives. On news of their husband?s death, they break their bangles and can no longer wear jewelry or use sindhoor - the red powder women wear in their parting and on their foreheads to denote their married status. An orthodox widow may be expected to cut her hair or even shave her head. A widow from the south of the country may not even be able to wear a blouse under her sari.

Her diet is also strictly restricted - she is forbidden from eating meat, fish and eggs, as well as anything touched by Muslim hands. And as traditionally, bakeries were run by Muslims, bread, biscuits or cakes are banned. Orthodox Hindus also believe that vegetables like onions, garlic and certain pulses heat the blood and are impure foods, so they?re also on the list of forbidden foods. She?s expected to fast several times a month, sometimes eating nothing but fruit for days on end.

A widow is sometimes called ?pram? or creature, because it was only her husband?s presence that gave her human status. In some Indian languages, a widow is referred to as ?it? rather than ?she?; in others, the word doubles as an abuse or is barely differentiated from the word for prostitute.

Moitri Chatterjee has been campaigning for the rights of widows for years. Coming from a traditional Bengali Hindu family, she saw close up the hardships women had to suffer once their husbands died. In the world she grew up in, she saw how a family would be ostracized if they didn?t adhere to the restrictions society placed on widows. ?Washer men wouldn?t wash their clothes, no shop keeper would sell things to them, they wouldn?t be able to participate in any rituals, and so on, so it was considered a great sin.?

In addition a widow was considered inauspicious, so she couldn?t be present at the rituals and celebrations that form such an integral part of Indian life such as marriage or birth ceremonies. In some cases even her shadow was considered polluting or offensive to ?cleaner? members of society.

After Moitri Chatterjee listed all the things a widow isn?t traditionally allowed to do, I only half jokingly asked her if a widow is allowed to laugh. She tartly replied ?well they?re allowed to laugh, though in those circumstances, I don?t know how many would want to.?

Traditionally, Bengal has been particularly harsh in its treatment of widows, especially when coupled with the centuries-long tradition of child marriage in the region. Echoing the myth that the god Siva took Parvati as his wife when she was only eight, girls were married off as young as eight or nine years old and as Hindu India was polygamous, a man could have several wives. Often the girls were married off to much older men, and there was even a tradition of giving daughters in marriage to traveling Brahmin priests who would come to visit a family for a night, marry the daughter, before moving on and leaving her behind. Girls married off as children stayed in their parents? house until puberty and only then could the husband come to claim them. Unsurprisingly, these girls were often left widowed and even if they were still barely children, the restrictions still applied.

Moitri Chatterjee remembers an aunt who had been married off at eight years old, only to find herself widowed at nine. ?Imagine, without even tasting married life, she became a widow and had to undergo all that penance, fasting, not eating, cutting her hair, wearing a white sari.? Such child widows usually were unwanted in their in laws house, so they either stayed in their parents? house as unpaid labor or were sent off to the ?widow cities? such as Varanasi or Vrindavan.

These cities are still magnets for widows and today they are full of dingy guest houses and ashrams where impoverished and abandoned widows come to try to eke out an existence till the death they long for comes to claim them. It is common knowledge that younger widows are often sexually exploited in these places, though the subject is taboo enough to earn an instant brush off if brought up with the authorities. As for the older women, their only hope is to plant themselves near temples or on busy streets and beg. Some go to bhajanashrams where they sit in shifts to chant prayers ? for a four hour shift they can earn a cup of rice and 7 rupees ? about 12 cents.

Lakhi Pal was brought to Varanasi by a neighbour when she became too old to take care of herself. She is one of the 18 old women who live a pitiful existence in the shabby government home at Durgakund. A widow for a quarter of a century, she once made a living by making clay pots in a village in Bengal. Today she?s old, bent almost double and weak and wheezy from an untreated asthma. Despite her infirmity however, she?s expected, like the others, to cook her own meal and clean her own clothes and utensils.
Each ill maintained room has four hard bunks ? and each bunk is the only domain of its resident who sits on it, sleeps on it, and stores her meager possessions above or under it. Lakhi Pal must, like the others, cook her daily dal and rice on a small primus stove near her bunk. There is no kitchen. Each woman is given Rs 400 a month ? about 8 euros for food and medicine.

I visited many ashrams and homes in India, talked to an endless stream of women like Lakhi Pal. There was Malti Mishra who said she had burnt all her hopes on her husband?s pyre, Priti Yadha Bhai who thirty years ago was married for only ten days, Margeret whose three adult daughters in Australia think she?s dead, Anwara Bibi who bore nine children but still begs food to survive. They all had their different sorrows but every one of them ended with the same sentence. ?I want nothing more now from life. I?m just waiting for death.?

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