Close by, the woman in white is giving her children dry biscuits. She stares at Smita, and the little girl crying in her arms. She walks across and offers to share her meal. Smita looks up at her in surprise; she is unaccustomed to offers of help, she has never resorted to begging. Despite her low status, she has always kept her dignity. For herself, she would have refused, but Lalita is so frail, so thin, she will never make the journey if she does not eat. Smita takes the banana and biscuits offered by the woman in white and thanks her. Lalita throws herself hungrily on the food. The woman has bought ginger tea from a passing tea-seller and offers some to Smita, who gladly accepts. The scalding, peppery-sharp tea revives her. The woman – her name is Lakshmamma – engages her in conversation. She wants to know where Smita and Lalita are going. Don’t they have a husband, a father, or a brother to travel with them? Smita replies that they are travelling to Chennai – her husband is waiting for them there, she lies. Lakshmamma and her two young sons are on their way to Vrindavan, a small town south of Delhi, known as the City of White Widows. She tells Smita that her husband died a few months ago, of flu. After his death, she was rejected by his family, with whom they lived. Bitterly, Lakshmamma tells her about the miserable fate of widows. They are cursed, and held responsible for the deaths of their husbands, for having failed to keep their souls here on Earth. Sometimes they are even accused of using witchcraft to bring about their husband’s sickness and death. They have no access to insurance if he suffers an accidental death and receive no pension if he is killed in combat. The very sight of them is considered an ill omen, even treading within their shadow brings bad luck. They are forbidden from attending weddings and festivals, forced to live in hiding, to wear white – the colour of mourning – and to show penitence. Often, they are thrown out onto the street by their own families. Lakshmamma describes the cruel tradition of sati, by which women in the past were forced to kill themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre. Those who refused were outcast, beaten or humiliated, and sometimes pushed forcibly into the flames by their in-laws, or their own children, to avoid having to share the inheritance with their surviving parent. Now, before being turned out onto the street, widows are forced to remove their jewellery and shave their heads, so that men will no longer be attracted to them. They are forbidden to remarry, whatever their age. In the countryside, where marriages are contracted at a very young age, some little girls find themselves widowed at the age of five and are forced to beg for the rest of their lives.