“And still, like dust, I’ll rise.” – Maya Angelou-

 

In White I Stand

A quiet script pressed upon me—

a colour fading before life’s dusk,

a silence taught, unspoken, but fierce.

And yet within,

a spark sighs, waiting to blaze.

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When Ismat Chughtai, that fearless chronicler of women’s truths, wrote with irony,

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“Aurat bewa ho jaati hai to uski chooriyan tod dete hain.

Mard ki ghadi ya huqqa todne ka khayal kabhi kisi ko na aaya,”

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she was not merely mocking ritual but probing the psychology beneath it—the way society polices women’s lives not only through law but through symbols and myths that seep into the female psyche like uninvited ink.

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Widowhood thus becomes not a personal sorrow but a public condition—marked, displayed, codified. The bangles vanish, the colour drains, the smile is muted.

Men grieve privately; women grieve in performance.

And so the lesson is learned early: joy is conditional, revoked by fate, sealed by ritual.

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Rituals as Scripts, Grief as Performance

Rituals, at their best, are meant to heal. Yet widowhood rituals too often control rather than console. A husband’s absence becomes the wife’s erasure. Whether through the insistence on white, the avoidance of festivities, or the discouragement of remarriage, the message remains: she is no longer a full participant in life. Even when outward practices fade, the hesitation remains—Should I laugh too loudly? Should I wear red? Should I attend a wedding? The outer censor may retreat, but the inner one stays.

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Kamala Das, in her fearless candour, once wrote:

“Dress in sarees, be girl,

Be wife, they said.

Be embroiderer, be cook...”

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To her catalogue of roles one could easily add: Be widow, be shadow.

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Women Policing Women

What deepens the paradox is how often women themselves enforce these roles. The mother-in-law reminding her widowed daughter-in-law to shed colour; the sister whispering that it is unbecoming to appear cheerful; the neighbour raising an eyebrow at lipstick “too soon.”

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This is not born of malice but of inheritance.

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Women transmit the chains they once bore, mistaking them for heirlooms.

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Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors and Anita Desai’s quiet heroines capture this inheritance of resignation—rituals as repetitions, conformity as comfort.

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Thus, patriarchy thrives not only in edicts but in echoes—passed from one generation of women to another.

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The Psychological Weight

The result is an inner exile. Many widows speak of guilt in wearing bright colours years later, of policing their own joy. The ritual moves from the wrist to the mind.

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Sylvia Plath’s stark confession—

“I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.”

echoes this silent vanishing.

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Grief, when ritualised, turns women into shadows in their own stories.

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Stories of Change: Resilience in Uniform

And yet, the script is not sealed. In recent years, luminous stories of resistance have emerged—women who refused erasure and redefined widowhood through courage.

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Lt. Swati Mahadik, wife of Colonel Santosh Mahadik who laid down his life in 2015, entered the Indian Army herself. At an age when others were finishing college, she marched through drills, transforming loss into leadership.

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Nikita Kaul, wife of Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal, stood by his coffin and declared, “It’s not a loss, it’s a gain.” She too donned the olive green years later, with her in-laws’ blessings.

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Jyoti Nainwal, widow of Naik Deepak Nainwal, trained for the Army with two young children and earned her commission in 2021.

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These women turned a ritual of absence into a declaration of presence—their stories rippling outward, rewriting the meaning of widowhood itself.

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Signs of Change and the Shadows That Remain

Such stories are not solitary sparks. Across India, many families now celebrate remarriage, include widows in festivities, and question the double standards of mourning.

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And yet—progress coexists with hypocrisy.

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The same society that applauds these women in newspapers whispers about them in neighbourhoods. A widow seen laughing too soon, a remarried one walking too tall, still stirs unease.

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As Nayantara Sahgal reminds us, freedom is incomplete until it enters the private sphere. Widowhood rituals remind us that even as public laws evolve, private lives often resist liberation.

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“Yet, even as winds of reform stir,

the soil of habit resists.”

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Towards Empathy, Not Extremes

It is unfair, however, to dismiss all ritual as oppressive. Some widows choose simplicity, some find solace in white, others reclaim colour. Choice is not the enemy—compulsion is.

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The balance lies in empathy: if ritual comforts, let it; if it confines, let it go.

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Judgement must be the first ritual to end.

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Sarojini Naidu’s voice still glows through the prism of time:

“Life is a prism of laughter and tears,

And I, a woman, must walk through the years.”

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Surely, those years deserve all hues—not merely the greys that grief prescribes.

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The Unbroken Spirit

Ismat Chughtai’s satire remains relevant because it exposes selective conscience. Men’s grief is private; women’s grief is performed. Yet, the stories of Mahadik, Kaul, and Nainwal prove that resilience is ritual too—a newer, nobler one.

Dignity lies not in denial but in affirmation, not in erasure but endurance.

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Grief is human, not gendered. Widowhood is not silence but song.

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And so let it end where it began, in verse—this time of renewal, not resignation:

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I wear not white alone,

But every colour life bestows.

In loss, I find my strength,

In grief, my spirit grows.

No ritual shall define me,

For I am more than sorrow knows.