The lot of the widowed woman in India is not so pitiable if she has been so fortunate as to have borne sons. In India, as in all Eastern countries, filial piety, the respect for parents, is bred into the very fibre of the man’s soul. When the mother becomes a widow and dons the gown of white, her son cares for her and cherishes her all her days. She is still the ruler of his household, and it would be a most unfilial son, on whom his world would soon cry shame, if he did not ask the advice of his mother on matters of importance, nor heed her warnings in times of stress. Her whole life is given for others, as this world is supposed to have no joys for her except the joy of service. For her “this world is but a dream: God alone is real”; and her days are passed in caring for the many lives around her and in prayers and religious rites that will help her to more swiftly pass the time ere she may join her lost one. The woman of India who has lost her mate turns instinctively to the gods for solace, because she has been taught from childhood that “the religion of the wife lies in serving her husband: the religion of the widow lies in serving God.”
CHAPTER X HYDERABAD AND THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN
The city of Hyderabad seems to have been dropped to the earth from an Oriental dream. It is the most Eastern city in this most Eastern land, and you are filled with a sense that it is not at all real, but especially staged and set for your amusement, and when you leave, it will all disappear. The gaily painted shops will be pulled down and put in the property-room, the goldsmiths who make the bracelets, nose-rings, and necklaces for the pretty, dark-eyed women within the zenanas is only waiting for his cue to leave the stage. The men on the corners with their great wreaths of white flowers, with their marigolds and garlands to be hung about the necks of friends, or to curtain the doorways at some feast or wedding, are there only for show, to add colour to the picture. These women passing by with saris of purple or crimson, with gleaming bracelets and tinkling anklets, with kohl-blackened eyes that stare at you wonderingly from above the closely drawn sari, or, what is more peculiar to visitors from the West, the women draped in long white cloaks like winding-sheets, which cover them completely from the view of the passer-by, seem part of the chorus; and the sheen of knives and guns and huge silver chains hanging over the shoulder of the man from the North, the elephant swaying slowly down the street, looking with keen, twinkling eyes at the people who make way for him, are all a part of the pantomime, or a mirage caused by the brilliant sunshine of this Southland.