Free Up in Flames by Geraldine Evans Page B

mistreatment comes down to money and inheritance.’
                  ‘Don’t most things, in the end?’ Catt muttered as a spasm of pain crossed his face.
                  As well as being irresponsible, Catt’s parents had been feckless and poor. Catt had confided one evening after downing too many lagers that they had abandoned him with a badly-spelt note pinned to his clothing, saying, “He costs too much. We can’t afford to keep him.”
                  But maybe ThomCatt had a point. Casey, with all the other aspects, had yet to look at every possible angle. Had Chandra inherited anything? Had her husband anything for her to inherit? It was essential to discover what the situation was, yet to ask her family or in-laws who were the obvious ones to supply the answer was unlikely to earn him any awards for diplomacy. Besides, how could he know what they told  him was the truth?
                  It was something else to be checked out. If her late husband hadn’t made a will Chandra would still have inherited a lot under the Intestacy Laws. The late Magan Bansi’s father was a businessman; had his son owned part of that business? Perhaps as a marriage gift? He made a mental note to check it out before he asked Shazia Singh to continue.
                  ‘Widows are regarded as inauspicious. In fact, to quote an early Hindu text, the Skand A Purana, “The widow is more inauspicious than all other inauspicious things.” It goes on, “At the sight of a widow, no success can be had in any undertaking, excepting one’s mother, all widows are void of auspiciousness. A wise man should avoid even her blessings like the poison of a snake.” ‘
                  She broke into the shocked silence that greeted this, to add, ‘To escape the life of outcasts in their villages many Hindu widows congregate in a place call Vrindavan, a holy city, Krishna’s birthplace, in central India or Varanasi, the ‘City of Lights’, as Mr Dan Khan mentioned. There, if they are lucky, they might earn a few rupees for hours of chanting a day in one of the many temples.
                  ‘The Hindu ban on the remarriage of widows was removed by a British law in the late 1800s, but the taboo on remarriage is still strong. For a widow to remarry brings dishonour on her family. It is believed, and not just by the poor and uneducated, that a woman’s husband dies because she has bad karma. And if she has bad karma, what is the point of marrying again? She is likely only to bring the same ill-luck to a second husband. It is her fault her first husband died, you see.’
                  ‘Even if a man’s own stupidity caused his death?’ Casey asked.
                  Shazia nodded. ‘She loses all her status and begins a new life — one where she waits for death, fated to mourn the death of her husband till the end of her days. Widows are traditionally regarded as witches and despised by everyone. People still believe that widows are cursed or diseased and that even by simply speaking to them one will be contaminated. You can see why even an older man in India would require a substantial dowry to take on such a wife, even a beautiful one, like Chandra Bansi.’
                  Casey had learned more than he had bargained for. But it seemed that Shazia Singh wasn’t finished yet. ‘Of course,’ she went on. ‘It used to be the custom that widows committed sati — immolated themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre. A Hindu widow is one of the “living dead”, you see, so it was better for all concerned that she should be dead. Cheaper, too, as far as any inheritance goes. Apart from that, a widow’s immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre freed his family from the cycle of birth and rebirth. Her sacrifice guaranteed that a woman, her husband and seven generations of the family after her will have a direct