Two Widows
By Lisa Meyerowitz-Singh

A widow dressed in black walks with other mourners to a casket in front of a crematorium.  She is talking as she enters.

She was smiling!

Can you believe that?  She was smiling.  I could see the flames dancing around her – smell the burning flesh – and she was smiling!

That’s how it’s done in India, you know.  Women are like some cheap commodity – something the family has to PAY to give away!  Yes – please marry my daughter and I’ll pay you 100,000 Rupees to take her off my hands”!

They say its part of her inheritance, but does SHE get to spend it as she sees fit?  Hardly!  Sometimes they let her burn in an “accidental” fire just to get one more dowry to pay the family debts.  That’s what I am too – expendable.  They didn’t even write to me.  No, just to my son – the man in the family!

(Silence, then…) O.K.  Maybe I’m not being fair.  And she loved my brother-in-law – my babu.  They looked so happy together.  I remember when she first came to our home from Calcutta --- huh?  --- oh, I mean our family home in Lucknow – at least his home, my husband’s.

We women had a mock wedding two days before she came.  We weren’t allowed to go with the men for the Bharat – the wedding procession.  In my husband’s family old traditions were still strong.  So, I dressed up like a bride and my sister-in-law played the groom.  Our aunt played the pundit – the priest.  She even stuck a sock under her dhoti – the loincloth the pundits wear.  She stuck a sock as if she were a man and she would go around thrusting her hips forward – like this – you know as some obscene jest.  It was so funny and I was so shocked!  I mean, these women were always so demure and to watch them let loose and have fun was … well it was something else.

When Meera, my sister-in-law, came home for the first time she was so shy.  Her head was down and she looked so timid. And so scared.  But after a week we could see how much they were starting to love each other and I was so amazed this kind of arranged marriage could work so well.  She wouldn’t talk to anyone else – she hated the family – but when he came home or in the room her face would light up like someone had touched a button and turned her on!

We used to always say they were a perfect match.  Amma, my mother-in-law, said she was the best grihastha – uh, householder – of all of us.

When we were home in Atlanta, my husband and I would sit and remember them.  We would be sipping our tea talking about what they might be doing or how good Munoo, his brother, was.  He would always be there for us when we visited.  And, we would look forward to the next visit when he would be waiting at the airport with a big smile on his face.  He would touch our feet and then grab us and give us a hug!  That smile could fill a room with energy and we would be ready to do anything for him!  No matter how tired we had been, it would all be gone.

But, one day when we were thinking of going someplace else for vacation – to Alaska I think – Munoo called.  There was something in his voice – something that said, “Listen, this is important”.  And he said, as if it was nothing, that he had liver cancer and just needed a transplant.  My husband said no problem—we would find a way.  But, then two weeks later he was in intensive care and three days after that he was dead!  
We got on the next flight to India to be there for the family.  You can’t believe how shocked I was when Meera told us she was going to commit sati – to be burned on the funeral pyre!

How could this happen in the 20th century!  How could anyone let this happen?  How could the family let this happen….And some were saying she would be a saint – forever revered as something special?

That day it was so cold.  A cold, winter day in a country that was usually so warm.  I remember the chill – how deeply it crept inside – and how we pulled our shawls tightly around us.  

I remember she turned to me and said, “Bhabhi, don’t cry.  It is my greatest happiness to be with him in death.  Take this chain and remember us always.”  She handed me this necklace…

I watched her climb those branches and twigs piled high above the body – saw her frail presence posing elegantly on top – watched the river flowing and saw them light the fire.  The flames soared and the smoke poured out.  

And she was smiling.

Do you think they expect me to do that?  

I’m not going to do that.  I am not going to sit on a funeral pyre.  I am going to live.  I’m going to go on.  

And smile…(with pain) later. (As she says these last words, she takes off the wedding sari which is draped around her shoulders, places it on the casket, and pushes the button.  The casket begins to move into the crematorium doors.)