My heart is crushed under an oppressive weight that makes it difficult to breathe. I long for the rush of tears to lighten my burden but they love playing truant when beckoned and arrive unbidden when I want to hide extremes of emotion.

It is Karva chauth and I am a relatively new widow – a pale shadow of a woman amongst the glittering bride-like bejeweled females decked up to the hilt. They flutter around like so many butterflies while I cringe, drab as a moth on the wall. Not that my logical mind ever believed that fancy fasts contributed in any way to the longevity of our men folk. Am I not a living example? It’s just that I miss the rituals and the fun. The dressing up in new clothes, the intricately patterned mehndi on my hands, the colourful jingle of bangles on my chitiya kalayian (fair wrists), bichuas on my toes, anklets with silver bells etc.  – solah sringar as it is called.  I miss the early morning sargi, the cribbing about the thirst and hunger throughout the day, chiefly the thirst and a seemingly nonchalant husband inwardly pleased with his woman’s wifely act.

I miss sitting at the katha in the late afternoon where suhagins gather in a circle with thalis to recount the irrational tale of the queen who blundered on her first karvachauth. She whiled away her time doing needlework when one is not allowed to do so on this day. This resulted in her husband being pierced all over by countless needles. As if this was not bad enough, she broke her fast before moonrise because her seven brothers could not bear to see her hungry and made a bonfire on the horizon, telling her that it was the moon. Her husband went into coma (? died) and she spent the entire year taking out the needles. When the last needle was to be removed, she was called away and her maid removed it. The king woke from his trance and unbelievably thought that the maid was the wife! This state of affairs continued for another year when the queen who now functioned as a maid fasted in a proper manner. This restored her husband’s reason and her position as a queen. I loved this implausible story, the passing of the thaals around and the fun and laughter.

The time after the pooja and before moonrise was the worst for dry lips and a dull headache generated irritability. Finally the much awaited moon rose in its imperfect majesty and dewy eyed suhagins looked at their husband through wire sieves and touched the feet of the very husbands they quarreled with for the remaining 364 days of the year! This was followed by the quenching of thirst and hunger and later in the night other bodily hungers that such sweet sacrifices demanded. It was the sexiest night on the Hindu calendar.

No such pleasures awaited me this karvachauth. A pale lily amidst a riot of roses, I could not even enjoy the happiness of other suhagins lest, despite their superficial modernity they think that widowhood is contagious and turn away from one on such an auspicious occasion. So I walked my dog in the shadows of the colony garden wall at night while they, resplendent in their finery conglomerated in the park awaiting moonrise with their pooja thaals, lighted diyas and sheepishly hovering husbands. I did not think I would miss my husband of a dysfunctional marriage so! A husband I only cribbed about when he was alive. An icy loneliness gripped my soul till finally, pitying my plight, a deluge of tears emptied my heart of sorrow.