Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/164

144 widows, of the highest caste, for instance, the type of woman who, in the olden days, would have fed the flames of the funeral-pyre bound to a husband’s corpse? What of her.

For the most part she lives the life of a willing drudge in the house of her mother-in-law. “For it is so alone now,” as one explained to me, “that we can win merit for our lords.”

I have never forgotten the agony of this little lady, sent home to her own mother to live in luxury, robbed of her chance of service.

It is not, I think, untrue to say that the orthodox Hindu widow suffers her lot with the fierce enjoyment of martyrdom and a very fanaticism of selflessness. But nothing can minimize the evils of that lot. After all, a widow is a thing of ill-omen, to be cursed even by those who love her. That she accepts the fact makes it no less of a hardship. For some sin committed in a previous birth the Gods have deprived her of a husband. What is left to her now but to work out his “salvation,” by her prayers and penances to win him a better life-place in his next genesis? So even the “cursings” of her are in their