VRINDAVAN WIDOWS PLAY HOLI

(BREAKING THE SHACKLES OF SOCIAL STIGMA)

She was wearing white, her hair cropped short, she was still young, may be my age, a blank pensive look in her eyes, as she stared at the innumerable women in colourful cholis and men in white kurtas all smeared in colour passing her. She was asking for alms. I knew she was the famous widow of Vrindavan, on whom so many award-winning documentaries have been made across the globe. But she stood still the same, bound by the age-old shackles of a society where women have always been swept behind the doors to suppress her beauty. Yes, she was a widow, she had thus no right to be at her sexual highs, she was not supposed to be the centre of male gaze, she could corrupt men and force them to commit a crime! So she cannot play a colourful festival like Holi, else the colours might make her look sensuous.

Couple of years back I was at the holy land of Vrindavan during Holi, for I was keen to view the world’s most colourful festival being played in the most exciting way. Vrindavan, the land of Krishna, Radha and the Gopinis is said to celebrate Holi in the most innovative way since hundreds of years where the whole town gets engaged for a whole week playing with flowers and vegetable dyes, instead of the gulaal and water we are used to play with in urban lives. Getting drenched in the stream of colourful flowers and their fragrance, to join the human flood of devotees who all had colour almost everywhere on them, would have been a welcome experience for sure.

As I wandered the colour-smeared streets around the Banke Behari temple (considered to be one of the most sacred temples of the area and where Holi is played in style), I saw her begging for alms… the widow of Vrindavan. She was almost my age. Could have been a model if decked up in style, she had a lovely figure, at the surprising peak of her fading youth. She looked at me long, and broke into a heavenly smile. She asked me in broken Hindi, if I was from Bengal. I said yes and she was so happy that there was someone in that land with whom she could speak in her mother tongue.

I asked her why she wasn’t entering the temple where Holi was being played. The streets were all colourful, white clad men and colourful women, all smeared in coloured water passed by. She looked at me with a blank face and was quite taken aback at my query. She asked: “Jano na, amader khelte nei” (Don’t you know we are not supposed to play Holi?) My husband and son were still within the temple. She asked me “Tumi khelbe na? Ekhane darun moja hoy” (Won’t you play? It’s great fun here) For a minute her eyes lit up, might be the image of her playing Holi played on).

I said, “No, I don’t play. I just came to watch.” I gave her a 500-rupee note. She thanked and blessed me and said I gave her enough to sustain for a month, the money she had to pay to the head of the ashram where she stayed. I knew if she couldn’t pay the headman of her ashram, she would have been forced into prostitution to earn it. She held my hands, put them on her forehead and said again, “Tumi abar esho.” (Do come again). I told myself, “If my society doesn’t allow you to play, then I will not play either, that’s why I lost all interest in Vrindavan’s Holi that had always attracted me even as a child.”

She was wearing white. I too was wearing white. We were the only ones whose clothes had no colour on them.

So when I got to know that widows in Vrindavan will finally play Holi, this year, thanks to the NGO Sulabh International, I was excited. Thousands of widows living as recluse in ashrams in Vrindavan, Agra and Varanasi have started celebrating a special four-day Holi. So now I have a reason to visit Vrindavan again during Holi and maybe some day I shall play with her, the widow I last met in the Holy Land.