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My mother's paternal grandmother was called Radha. Born in 1865, she was married at the age of six. Child marriage was widely practised and young widows were common. Unfortunately, that was Radha's fate also. By twenty, she was a widow. Society did not look kindly upon widows and they hardly had any rights on joint family property. Most of them lived in poverty and hardship. Widow remarriage was unheard of. The custom of 'sati' was rare, but existed in Kashmir and there were some instances of women burning themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres. My mother witnessed one when she was about ten.
She remembers that
there was great excitement. The woman was from an important local family and everybody thought she was some kind of goddess. The funeral procession took a long and circuitous route so that more people could see it. Everybody along the route came out much before time. Finally the procession came, the woman leading it. She was freshly bathed and dressed in white. Her hair was uncovered. She wore a huge vermilion mark on her forehead and in the parting of her hair. Her face glowed as she walked, with pride, head held high. In her hand, she carried a big burning oil lamp. As she passed, men and women threw flowers on her. Some started wailing and crying, some shouted 'Sati Mata ki Jai' ('Glory to Mother Sati). My mother and I also threw lotus flowers.
Strangely, this occurred many years after the custom was banned by the British at the instance of the social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Rai.
Tradition and custom allowed a widow to adopt a child. Radha had a daughter and she expressed a desire to adopt a son. Hindus believe that unless a son performs the funeral rituals of a parent, the parent's soul will remain eternally in hell. A son would also support her in the old age. A cousin offered her his son in adoption. The child later became my grandfather Tara Chand Tiku. His mother had great plans for him. She wanted to give him an English education and see him as a government official. She put him in a mission school across the river and then sent him to Sri Pratap Singh College for his graduation. Life was a struggle for Radha. She had not received any share of her husband's property. She had no income and only had the house her parents left her. Hers was a respectable upper caste Brahmin family, whose women stayed at home. If they came out, they were veiled and carried in palanquins. The question of her going out and earning a living was out of question.
Secretly, with the help of some Muslim neighbours, she started spinning Pashmina wool in the basement of her house. Her neighbour would bring her the expensive raw material, take the spun yarn to the merchant and give her the money. Thus she lived independently and managed to educate her son. I have seen her spinning wheels in the basement when I wandered into it during a summer visit to Kashmir. My grandfather was in the first batch of boys who sat for the Bachelors Degree examination in Srinagar at Sri Pratap Singh College. The University of Lahore conducted the exam. The same year, he sat for the Forest Range Officer's examination.
Part of the exam was to run from First Bridge (Ameera Kadal) to the top of Shankaracharya Hill. I am told en route, grandfather lost the sole of one of his canvas shoes. He kept running thinking of his mother and came first. His selection as a range officer was an hour of great triumph for the single, money-less woman. He later rose to become Conservator of Forests and made his mother proud. Mother and son were greatly attached to each other. Both died one after the other in 1946.
(To be continued…)
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