TREVOR BORMANN: On a tributary of the Ganges River, pilgrims gather to venerate a God. In Hindu teachings, Krishna offers solace to downtrodden women. This town has more than its share. Thousands of women young and old have come to the childhood home of Krishna for one purpose – to live out their days in worship in the hope that death will come soon.

DR MOHINI GIRI: She’s relegated… she becomes a zero - and all her powers are lost.

TREVOR BORMANN: In many conservative Indian Hindu families, widows are shunned because they’re seen as bringing bad luck. Superstitious relatives even blame them for their husband’s death. The widow can become a liability with no social standing, an unwanted mouth to feed. Often they’re cast out of the family home.

For many women in this culture, the loss of a husband can be an upheaval beyond belief. It can be a one-way ticket to isolation, poverty and despair. For thousands of women it can also mean a journey to a place unique in India, to a town called Vrindavan.

In the dark and damp backstreets, India’s forgotten widows chant for their supper. They do this for hours each day, for a few meagre rupees from a charity organisation that runs this place. These women were once revered as daughters, wives and mothers. Many haven’t seen their children in years. Some will die in Vrindavan without seeing them again.

Only the fortunate have a regular home. At this shelter one hundred and twenty women live in tiny windowless rooms – but it offers a roof to keep them dry and two meals a day. And it offers medical care from Doctor Saroj Goyal.

So Doctor is she okay?

DR SAROJ GOYAL: She is okay.

TREVOR BORMANN: She’s a very old lady.

DR SAROJ GOYAL: A very old lady, more than a hundred.

TREVOR BORMANN: More than a hundred! How old do you think she is?

DR SAROJ GOYAL: She’s about a hundred and five…

ASSISTANT: A hundred and ten.

DR SAROJ GOYAL: A hundred and ten.

TREVOR BORMANN: A hundred and ten years old?

DR SAROJ GOYAL: Yes.

TREVOR BORMANN: So when did her husband die and when would she have been cast out?

DR SAROJ GOYAL: Oh sixty years back.

TREVOR BORMANN: Sixty years ago.

DR SAROJ GOYAL: Sixty years ago. They become so religious in the end because they haven’t seen any happiness in their life in the world so they become so religious that they want to live here, they want to die here. It is their last wish.

TREVOR BORMANN: They arrive each day to the so-called ‘city of widows’, alone and penniless. Many of the sixteen thousand widows of Vrindavan have no choice but to beg.

As a gesture of humility, some newcomers follow the custom of shaving their head. Conservative Hindus believe a widow must never marry again. She can neither attract attention nor be attractive and must renounce all worldly pleasures.

DR MOHINI GIRI: A woman who is ruling the house even in a rich family, suddenly finds herself bereft of all powers and she’s an inauspicious person and nobody should even touch her.

TREVOR BORMANN: Dr Mohini Giri is a leading light of India’s women’s movement and a widow herself.

DR MOHINI GIRI: [Women’s activist] So all of them come here in search of death, waiting for death. They are waiting on the roads, they are waiting on street corners and ultimately it’s so sad that when they die, there’s no one even to pick up their bodies because a widow’s body is inauspicious.

TREVOR BORMANN: The shared misfortune of the widows of Vrindavan has brought them together. There’s little help from outside relief agencies. Instead, the women gather in private homes and rely on the generosity of middle class families in the town. Here the owner of a private school has opened her doors to counsel widows.

But it’s difficult being old and immobile. On this day, ninety-seven year old Lalita Goswami is practically starving and comes for help and nourishment.

OWNER OF PRIVATE SCHOOL: Stop thinking about your children. You hurt yourself by thinking of them. Don’t think of them. I am your daughter.

LALITA GOSWAMI: I keep thinking what a lot I have lost because of my sons.

TREVOR BORMANN: Mrs Goswami is a high caste Brahamin from Calcutta but when her husband ran off with another woman fifty years ago, her two sons dumped her in Vrindavan and never returned.

She told me she kept trying to jump in the river to drown but onlookers kept saving her.

LALITA GOSWAMI: I can’t survive like this. Please get me some poison. I want to end my life. Give me a room, son… fan, water and a little latrine. I am not asking for anything else, son. Or else, drown me in Yamuna river. I can’t take it anymore, son. I can’t take it anymore.

TREVOR BORMANN: The younger widows of Vrindavan can work to supplement the income they earn from chanting. Any extra cash is put aside in trust to pay for their funerals. But some have lurched into prostitution or live in rooms where rent is paid in sexual favours.

Clinics on the outskirts of town make significant business performing abortions on younger widows.

Dr Mohini Giri has created a widow’s sanctuary. She’s treated like a saviour by those she protects at her shelter. Many of these women were married when they were girls of eight, nine and ten – and some were widowed when they were barely into their teens. The widows here have returned to their colourful saris. Most of them still pray but they’re also kept occupied with craft projects and making incense for a nearby temple.

DR MOHINI GIRI: So we will teach skills to the women, we will see that even if women are illiterate, they will have certain skills in which they’ll become economically independent.

TREVOR BORMANN: In her more caring home, twenty eight year old Gargee is at least surrounded by those who support her. She suffers delusion and is convinced she’s pregnant. Years of living in shelters with no friends or family has taken its toll.

DR MOHINI GIRI: If a woman is good at music we encourage her to sing. If she’s good at painting we ask her to do painting. Whatever she feels that she’s good at we encourage her to do that.

TREVOR BORMANN: The mistreatment of widows in India transcends all Hindu castes but it’s more evident in conservative poor families. Not surprisingly, ‘the haves’ of Indian society fare better.

JABA MENON: And reality learning we have... reality learning there’s absolutely no change besides removing Sanjiv’s name.

TREVOR BORMANN: Jaba Menon is a marketing executive based in New Deli.

JABA MENON: He wants to cancel even those that have already been scheduled into the Sun Times because it is not getting them any response.

TREVOR BORMANN: When her husband Venu died after six years of marriage, she remained in his family home along with her in-laws and daughter Venika.

JABA MENON: My parents or my in-laws never held me responsible for my husband’s death. I knew I could run the family. Both my in-laws being retired and with a child and full time help, I knew that I had the confidence that I could be running the house.

TREVOR BORMANN: Jaba Menon found her mother and father-in-law tolerant and accepting. She after all is the breadwinner in this family.

JABA MENON: I did not have as much anxiety as to whether I would be able to send my child to school. I did not suffer from that anxiety but the pain and the social... the loss and the loneliness, the helplessness, everything was there as much in me as any other widow in Vrindavan would go through.

TREVOR BORMANN: This is a nation of forty million widows. The rates of widowhood are the highest in the world, mainly because most women don’t remarry.
At her shelter in Vrindavan, Dr Mohini Giri has some visitors. Two sisters have arrived to check on the welfare of their sick mother.

And she’s dying now?

DR MOHINI GIRI: She’s dying. Today or tomorrow she’ll go.

TREVOR BORMANN: It’s the old woman we had filmed days earlier. Her health has taken a turn for the worse. Her two daughters have come to say goodbye and to ask Dr Giri to arrange and pay for the funeral because they say they can’t afford it.

DR MOHINI GIRI: Somebody has to take the body. Somebody has to take charge. Otherwise crows and eagles and dogs and all these things come and eat the body.

The son ran away from her when he knew that his mother was not well and she would be a burden on him.

TREVOR BORMANN: So what do you think of the action of the son, doctor?

DR MOHINI GIRI: I think it’s really bad. The action of her son is irresponsible. We should tell all our children that we give them nine months in our stomach and give them birth and this is what we get at the end of our lives? And this is the story of all these women.

How many mothers here have sons? Raise your hands. Why doesn’t your son come to take you?

TREVOR BORMANN: Hindus believe they can achieve freedom from the cycle of birth and rebirth if they devote their lives to prayer. The widows drawn to the town of Vrindavan, may well hope for a better afterlife. Their mortal existence has delivered little joy.