The second man

She has been asked to marry again, and her family insists that she should do it fast because youth, like time and tide, doesn't wait. The family priest talked about the Dharmashastra and explained to her what the Manusmriti said. Ne stree svatantyam arahathi: "a woman is undeserving for independence". A woman needs the support of a man for the same reason creepers need the support of a frame. It is even worse for a Hindu widow, he said. She is lucky if she can take another man. Else, she will have to count her grim days in Vrindavan.

But how could she take another man when the memories of her dead husband still burned inside the heart! He was a good man, who loved his wife, a man who talked about the future and children, until he bled to death under a mugger's knife. It was a precious life taken away for a small sum of cash. The vapours rise to her eyes as her voice chokes on tears, every time she shares her grief with family and friends.

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It is said that one must learn to accept casualties in life, because there is no time to mourn the fallen in the midst of a fight. Still how could she forget the man whose memory comes to her mind as naturally as night after day? He woke up when the first light of the morning swum into the house like seawater lapping at distant shores. He whispered into her ears before he left for work that love of her always danced in his blood. Then he never returned because a senseless killer took his life. When she looked at the blood- soaked clothes, she felt as though so much love was splattered in vain. It drained her more than it drained him!

The mother came to her, sobbing more times than she could speak. She lamented that a Hindu woman, once widowed, is twice scorned, because the gods in heaven like rest of the world blamed that she had devoured her man. Then the mother described how religious texts like Skanda Purana urged to avoid the widows, because they were more inauspicious than all other inauspicious things in the world.

The mother also described the plight of widows, reminding her of an aunt of hers who worked like an unpaid servant in her husband's house for 30 long years after he died. When her husband died three women from the barber class swooped on her to tear off the ornaments on her. Then she was left alone and nobody approached her on that day even to offer water. In the funeral procession of her husband, she was made to walk 200 feet behind other women lest her shadow fell on them and brought bad luck. After 13 days, a barber came to shave her head. In old age, the poor thing was sent to Vrindavan to spend her life chanting in the temples from dawn to dusk.

The mother reminded that a widow is condemned to an austere life. She is made to wear red or white sari without ornaments and eat one single meal in a day. She is forbidden in family functions lest her presence boded evil to those who saw her face. The Hindu widow transforms into some kind of a freak and slogs through life like a shadow of death.

Yet the daughter has been thinking again and again how life is going to be better than death, how she is going to look at another man, if she couldn't blink once without having the face of her dead husband flash in her mind! But the mother cautioned her daughter again and again. She couldn't live for a man who was no more real than a piping dream.

So she has been asked to make up her mind. Why is it wrong if she were to marry the younger brother of her dead husband? She tried to reason again and again that this is a man who grew up right in front of her eyes, the kid whom she watched growing tall in arms and legs, moustache and beard sprouting in his face. How could she marry this sapling of a man who has been like a son to her?

They said if she loved her husband so much, how could she possibly leave his house? Wouldn't she want to look after his family, his old parents in absence of their son? But she couldn't do it unless she also lived with them. And how could she live with them if she didn't live in the same house? It could happen if she married the brother, because poverty was even weaker than a woman. If the brother married elsewhere, she couldn't stay since the family couldn't afford to keep an additional mouth in the house.

Meanwhile, the preparation for the wedding got underway. The priest was consulted for the auspicious day. An invitation list was drawn up to keep the wedding limited within close relatives. They brought her new clothes and jewelry, barely enough for an austere ceremony. She met with her future husband and pleaded with him to stop the marriage. He mumbled first, and then said in figure of speech that he couldn't hold back an arrow that was already shot.

She sobbed while others got busy, sadly watching an insensitive world ignoring her grief. They tried to convince her that it wasn't unusual for a Hindu widow to marry her husband's brother. Her friends quipped that husbands died on fortunate women, so that they could marry younger men. She listened to them, but said nothing as she wondered why the relationship between man and woman should always rotate around physical attraction. Is burning all that the fire does? What about keeping warm in the winter? What about the spark and the glow in the dark?

The night before the wedding, her father-in-law sat down with her. He ran his dry and wiry hand over her head and looked at her with teary eyes. He said Sati threw herself into the fire in protest of her father's arrogance not to show respect to her beloved Lord Shiva. True love demands supreme sacrifice, and she must marry in the same house for the sake of her late husband.

She bitterly wept throughout the night, thinking about her plight as a woman, how she grew up from a little girl like a plant grows from the seed. She married a man who abruptly died, and now she has to marry again, if not the younger brother of her husband, then another man. There is no second chance in life, unless there is a second man. How does it distinguish her from those women in the notorious trade? There is no freedom in the body unless there is also freedom in the mind. This is the question, which will haunt her no matter which man she gets to choose.

She thought of what her father-in-law said, and the wedding took place on the following day.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.