Going Back in Time

My mother's mother's mother - my maternal greatgrandmother - had quite a story to tell about her life even though she lived her life in meek insignificance! I watched the movie "Water" only because it spoke of a cultural situation from which my greatgrandmother or Badi Nani, as we called her, escaped in a timely way. Badi Nani was born perhaps in 1885 and grew up in Kendua, south Kolkota in Hooghli District. She was married at the tender age of twelve or thirteen to the village 'purohit' Hari Babu Mukherji, a person of bad habits, a drunkard and an 'afeemchi'. It was customary for young girls to marry at that age and Shoshi was no exception. Soon after her marriage, her husband died, leaving her with a baby daughter who never got to know her father. Badi Nani, being a widow, had very few options of survival in early 20th century Bengal. She could have committed 'sati', where she could have been burned along with her husband on his funeral pyre. It was still prevalent at that time inspite of the social reforms. The other option was to be taken to Kashi (modern Varanasi) to die. This is what her mother and family decided to do. Along with her infant daughter, Shoshi was taken by her mother to Kashi at the banks of the river Ganges, sacred to Hindus, where she was to meet the ritual requirements of being a widow.

Widows from the Hindu background are faced with many rituals and the higher their caste, the more restrictions they face. Traditionally when a man dies, his widow is expected to renounce all earthly pleasures. Widows should no longer look attractive, and are expected to wear only simple white saris for the rest of their lives. A widow must cut her hair or even shave her head. She is forbidden from eating meat, fish and eggs, as well as anything touched by Muslim hands. And as mostly bakeries are run by Muslims, bread, biscuits or cakes are banned. Orthodox Hindus also believe that vegetables like onions, garlic and certain pulses heat the blood and are impure foods, so there is much they can't eat. Widows are expected to fast several times a month, sometimes eating nothing but fruit for days on end. Sadly, a widow is sometimes called 'pram' or creature, because it was only her husband's presence that gave her human status. In some Indian languages, a widow is referred to as "it" rather than "she"; in others, the word doubles as an abuse or is barely differentiated from the word for prostitute. Families would be ostracized if they didn't follow the restrictions society placed on widows. No washerman would wash their clothes, no shopkeeper would sell things to them, they wouldn't be able to participate in any rituals because a widow was considered inauspicious; she couldn't be present at the rituals and celebrations that form such an integral part of Indian life, such as marriage or birth ceremonies. Even her shadow was considered polluting or offensive.

When Shoshi reached Varanasi along with her daughter and mother, at the railway station, they were spotted by an aunt, her mother's cousin. This lady had become a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and joined the Zenana Mission and came to the railway station to rescue many such sad lives. Shoshi was tactfully taken by this aunt along with her daughter to the Zenana Mission in the heart of Varanasi. Shoshi's mother informed the 'pandas', Brahmin pandits who are the keepers and defenders of the traditions of the Hindu faith and they were furious that a high-caste Bengali widow had been spirited away by the Zenana Mission. They surrounded the Zenana Mission and Shoshi's mother came to persuade her to return. It was an emotional time but Shoshi and her baby daughter stayed on at the Zenana Mission and her mother returned to Kendua leaving her daughter and granddaughter behind.

The Church of England Zenana Missionary Society was founded in 1880 when it separated from the interdenominational Indian Female Normal School Society, which had been founded in 1852. Its main aim was to evangelise the women of India by means of normal schools (teacher training colleges), zenana visiting, medical missions, Hindu and Muslim female schools and the employment of Bible women. The society worked in close co-operation with the Church Missionary Society with which it merged later.

It was at the Zenana Mission in Varanasi that Shoshi accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal Saviour. She also studied enough to be a warden and a teacher. She went on to Khandua, near Indore, with an American Methodist School where she was the warden and earned enough to give her daughter the best education at the American Presbyterian Mary Wanamaker School in Allahabad and later at the Lady Harding College of Nursing in New Delhi. Later when her daughter was married in Punjab, Shoshi went further north and lived there helping to raise her grandchildren. She died in the hills where her daughter had built her home in an apple orchard in the Kulu hills.

As the psalmist says in Psalm 68:5 in the Message version: Father of orphans, champion of widows, is God in His holy house. Shoshi's life makes this verse come alive. She was never alone or forsaken even through the toughest times of her life. Her faith in the Blood sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for her personally makes her testimony an encouragement to me that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, Lord and Ruler of our destiny when we surrender ourselves to Him.