SITA THE WIDOW
Sita was only a child but she was very miserable. The other little
girls she knew romped and played about, but she had to work hard and to
bear blows and many other kinds of cruelty. She did not know why this
was, but she could remember a time long before--at least it seemed long
before--when people were kind to her, and she could play and romp about
too. Even in her dim memory of these days one person had been unkind to
her. An old man who had shaken her and told her to be quick and grow
up that she might work for him. But one day he died, and Sita was very
glad. Only she was not allowed to be glad long, for the others in the
house came round her and told her that she had killed him, and from
that time they ill-treated her terribly. She had to draw and carry all
the water that was needed for washing and cooking; and a great deal was
required, for there were nine people in the house. Sometimes she was
terribly tired, and it seemed as if she could not draw up one bucketful
more of water. One day, when she was ten years old, she was more tired
than ever, and she sat down for a little by the well, while happy
careless women drew up their bucketfuls and put them gaily on their
heads. They looked bright in their cotton robes, and their hearts were
bright too for they sang little songs as they clustered round the well.
Sita thought there was a kind look in the face of one woman who came,
and she said to her, “Will you not draw a little water for me, the well
is so deep, and I am tired and ill?”
The woman started back from the little brown figure with the tattered
clothes and the shaven head. “Widow!” she said. Then she cursed Sita
and told her that she had done her harm by letting her shadow fall on
her, and that she would have to take a bath before she could eat; and
then she cursed her again.
The child looked up in surprise. She did not know what all this meant.
The tears were in her eyes, and the woman, with a touch of pity,
stopped a moment, when she was safely out of reach of Sita’s shadow,
and asked:--
“Why should I help you when the gods have cursed you? See, you are a
widow.” But Sita only gazed at her.
“Don’t you understand? Did you not have a husband once?” “Yes, I think
so, the old bad man who used to shake me.” “You call him bad?” “No
wonder the gods hate you. You must have been very bad once. So now you
are a widow, and by and bye you will be a toad or a snake.” Then the
woman lifted her water-pots and hurried away.
Sita hastened too for she knew she had stayed too long, and when she
reached the house she was so tired that she nearly fell, but instead of
a cool drink or kind words her sister-in-law burned her arms and hands
with a hot poker because she did not go to work quickly enough and the
little one had to labour on through all her pain.
So the days passed one by one. Some were worse and some were better.
But Sita was always hungry for since her head was shaved she was only
allowed to eat once a day and that only of the least pleasant kind of
food. She was lonely too, for most of the children fled from her. But
there was one girl called Tungi, who used to manage to speak to her
sometimes. Tungi was a little wife, but she had not yet gone to stay
with her husband. He was in school, and he had sent word that his wife
must go to school too, till they were both older, because he wished
her to be able to sing and to read books and be happy with him when he
spoke of the things he cared about.
Tungi’s mother did not like this at all. She thought as very many
people in India think that it is a bad thing for women to read and
write; but Tungi was married, and, just as her mother would not have
thought it right to save her from her husband if he had been ill-using
her, so she did not think it right to refuse to let her go to school.
Tungi was a bright girl and she quickly took in many of the lessons
that were taught at school. One of these was that it would do her no
harm to talk to a widow, so though she dared not let her mother see her
talk to Sita, she used to sit by her whenever she could get a chance to
do it without being seen.
It was not a great thing for Tungi to do, for she loved to see the
light steal into the frightened eyes; but if it was only another joy in
Tungi’s full life it was like the gate of heaven to Sita. Even to catch
a passing sight of Tungi made a day a red letter day for the little
widow.
Sita told Tungi all about what the woman at the well had said to her,
and Tungi told her that many of those who were at school did not
believe such things about widows. She told her too, that there was a
better God than the ones who would treat a child as she was treated,
and so she tried to comfort her little friend.
Soon Tungi had to go back to school and nine months passed before the
children met again.
There had been a great contrast between them at the beginning of the
nine months, but it was far greater at the end.
Tungi’s eye was brighter. She had learned a great deal more, and life
was interesting and glad to her. But poor Sita was sadder and more
worn. Her husband’s family had used her worse and worse. They had
almost forgotten that she could feel, and they treated her as if she
had really killed her husband.
A beautiful young widow who lived near Sita had drowned herself in a
well when she found how miserable her life was after her husband’s
death. Sita looked into the cool water and wondered how long it would
take her to die if she leapt in. Then she thought of what the woman had
said a year before, and she could see herself jumping about as a little
frog, and she feared that something worse even than that might happen
to her, and that she might go to one of the places of punishment beyond
the world altogether. So she shrank back, and tried to face the dreary
round again--the hunger, the labour and the cruel pain.
Even the joy of seeing Tungi once more could scarcely raise her
spirits, and the tenderness of her little friend only brought tears to
her eyes. But this time Tungi had more than kindness to offer. She told
Sita of Ramabai’s home. It seemed impossible to Sita that she could
enter there--she, whom no one wanted, and who had never been free to
do what she wished. But Tungi told her that nothing could prevent her
from getting into the Sharada Sadan, if she could reach it. And Sita
did reach it, and what is more she reached it before all the fun and
nonsense in her had been killed, and the happy years that followed
healed the tiredness and the sickness of her arms and body, though they
could not make her forget the darkness of her early days of widowhood.
Before Sita had heard of Ramabai’s home, Tungi had said to her,
“There’s a better God than that.” And in the Sharada Sadan Sita learned
to know that God. And when she grew up a Hindu gentleman, who had
also learned to know God, asked her to marry him, and Sita who had
been left a widow at the age of four by the death of the “old bad man”
became a happy Christian wife.
[Illustration: RESCUED CHILD WIDOWS]