Look at this cute way of carrying a baby! I saw a lot mums carrying their kids around like this — it seems simple and rather effective. The kids seemed to like the closeness and unlike here (in Sydney, Australia), I heard very little crying and no tantrums that I can remember. Mind you, I was mainly outside of the big cities so maybe it’s different in Shanghai or Beijing.

One of the things I like about India is that people seem to have time to spend with each other. Not so much in places like Bangalore or Delhi, but in Varanasi I often noticed shopkeepers chatting together, playing chess or just hanging out. Or here in this snapshot, what looks like a mother and her two daughters sitting on the step of a temple after finishing their chores, enjoying their conversation.

Marriage in India is a marketplace and the dowry system, which remains alive and well, is the currency used by most Indian parents to buy a good match for their daughters. Unfortunately, the numbers of Indian women who are murdered or left maimed and scarred because of dowry related issues continues to rise and goes largely unreported by the mainstream media.

In 1999, Himendra Thakur, in an article titled, Are our sisters and daughters for sale? estimated that more than 25,000 brides were killed or maimed in India each year over dowry disputes. Many suggest that numbers have increased since then by over 170%.

I would like to tell you about Sangita — a young, bright and attractive Indian woman with a 4 month old child. Sangita was a teacher at Buddha’s Smile School until she left to get married.

I visited her in a filthy public hospital in Varanasi, India in December 2006 with one of her friends. She had been there for two weeks, being looked after by her brother and her sister. I’m no doctor but it looked to me like she had third-degree burns all down her front — from her forehead to her knees. Her face (cheeks, eyelids, nose) were swollen and discoloured and covered in a thick white cream. Her lips, neck and ears were black and oozed blood. Two fingers on one hand had almost no skin remaining.

White cream mixed with red blood is not a pretty sight and when she saw us enter the hospital room she began to cry. Tears mixed with white cream and blood is even more sad and disturbing. I watched her with as much tenderness as I could muster. It was an effort. I didn’t want to look away, I wanted ‘needed’ to look into her eyes so that she might know an ounce of what I felt for her predicament. I didn’t talk to her. I didn’t think she’d understand English and I can’t speak Hindi. So just being there and looking into her eyes was all I thought I had to offer.

She’d told the police she didn’t know how she was burnt. She’d told them it was probably an accident, but others say different. They say she had kerosene thrown over her and that she was then set alight by her in-laws in order that her husband could re-marry and receive another dowry. They say she was frightened for the life of her child so she didn’t tell the the police what really happened.

Fact or fiction? You be the judge. But the fact that her in-laws wouldn’t pay for any of her medical bills or give her blood, the fact that her husband and his family were supposedly in the room when her clothes caught alight and the fact that none of them helped or called for an ambulance (she called her brother herself on a mobile phone 30 minutes after the event) seems to suggest something less than honourable.

I have been told that in India it is all too common for marriages to end in this way. Bride-burning or dowry-burning they call it. I suppose I shouldn’t be too shocked at the levels of unbelievable cruelty some people can descend to for money, but I am.

On Saturday January 13, 2007 at 6 am, Sangita passed away. She had suffered weeks of unbelievable pain and although we had moved her into the burns unit of a private hospital we were unable to save her life or make her last weeks on this earth pain free.

Sangita’s child is safe and being well cared for.

We will remember her always.

This photo has kindly been provided by Yoga & Health — Europe’s best selling Yoga magazine — who published an article about Buddha’s Smile School in February 2005. Sangita is the woman on the left. The woman on the right is Rajan, the principal of Buddha’s Smile School.

Sunday morning
awakens with my senses –
coffee and newspapers

maybe not a Haiku by John Holman

I enjoyed visiting Chengdu. It’s a huge city of about 10 million — seems mostly modern(ish). One thing I do notice when I travel these days, is how we are all the same. We all work, we all eat lunch and we all want to be happy. The old saying — more things unite us than separate us — has never seemed truer for me.