Sati – motivated by love or desperation?
October 14th 2008.
For every step we take forward, we seem to take two backwards in this country. What on Earth would possess a woman to jump into her husband’s funeral pyre?
Just a few days ago, a 71-year-old woman in Raipur jumped into her husband’s funeral pyre, according to news articles. BR Mandawi, the officer in charge of the investigation told IANS that the old woman lived in a corner of an old house with her husband and in the rest of his statement he ruled out the possibility of foul-play. Mandawi even stated that the lady’s three sons had no idea of her intentions.
Why is it that these stories never seem to add up? She wasn’t living with her children but in a corner of an old house. Everyone, save for this 71-year-old woman, had left the site of the funeral before the fire had burnt out. None of this sounds at all strange?
We live in a culture where we cling to our parents, don’t we? We don’t leave our parents’ homes or have them leave ours, and we certainly don’t abandon our weeping mothers at our fathers’ funerals.
So though I don’t suspect that the police investigation was anything short of thorough, I wonder…
Was this lady treated well? Was this, what she saw as her only way out of a miserable existence and what pushed her to such extremes?
While I sympathise with the lady’s family, I have to wonder if these questions will ever be answered? What do y’all think? What really happened?
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