印度寡婦、離婚和單身女性的生活

The rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus in 2012 made headlines and sparked protests about violence against women. But there are other hazards for women in India, and particularly for single women - who are often unable to live a normal life.

Wearing a long, bright yellow frock and two well-oiled plaits, she was silently doing her chores in a village home when I first saw her.

For a moment I took Khuddo to be a teenage domestic help, a small girl cooking, cleaning and mopping, just like millions of them who work in homes in India's teeming cities and villages.

But when she turned and flashed a shy smile, I saw a face of an older woman. And then I discovered, to a creeping sense of shame, that she was not a domestic help either.

Khuddo lived with a vast, extended family in a crowded home with her widowed mother, aunts, uncles and their families. She had four siblings who lived and worked all over India. Her father had passed away a long time ago.

Khuddo was about 50, and single. Even as the family grew, she had faded into the background, immersing herself in the drudgery of dull and backbreaking chores. She contributed nothing to the thrumming noise of the family. They called her their "tragic case". "Sometimes, it feels," a family member told me, "she does not exist at all."

Why do you dress like a girl, I asked her. Her mother answered instead.

"She is unmarried, so she should not look or dress up like a woman."

The family refuses to accept that a woman can be grown-up and still not be married. So to them Khuddo is still a child. [or "a child woman"?]

Khuddo is one of many Indian women who have simply sunk into oblivion because they remained single, not by choice, but by circumstance or a twist of fate.

In a society where a woman is traditionally considered to be complete when she marries - preferably to a groom of her parents' choice - singledom can be cruel and oppressive.

There are some 40 million women in India, according to the 2001 census, who are single and over the age of 30 - divorced, separated or unmarried. This is believed to be a conservative estimate.

Many of them are beginning to defy convention by remaining single by choice, and eking out a life for themselves without depending, like Khuddo, on the grudging munificence of their families. India's fast-changing cities are also slowly beginning to accept single women for what they are. But the change is extremely slow and painful for many who are facing it every day.

If being single can sometimes relegate a woman to the background, divorce can be traumatic. Social stigma surrounding divorce still hangs heavy over women, usually housewives, who are dependent on their husbands.

That's not all. If a married couple splits up, the woman generally struggles to receive her fair share of the couple's property. And even what she is entitled to can get tied up in litigation in India's excruciatingly slow-moving courts.

Deepali, 25, from the city of Mumbai, is a sorry example of how a slow justice system and social stigma can unwittingly conspire against a separated woman, especially with children.

She lives in a grotty one-room tenement with her four-year-old son, and does odd jobs as a waitress at wedding parties or as a housemaid.

Her husband abandoned her and initiated divorce proceedings after his family rejected her.

She says she has received no maintenance payments in the three years they have been living separately. It says a lot about Indian society that she is keen to be reunited with her husband, despite the fact that he used to beat her regularly.

"I don't want a divorce. My son and I need the name of the father to avoid social stigma. Society should not say that my son is illegitimate," Deepali says.

"I don't want to be called a divorcee. So I'd rather carry on like this. I also think what my son will think of me when he grows up if I end up being a divorcee! Good women don't end up as divorcees, you know."

Nimisha, in her 30s and working, does not fit the description of a "good woman" by that logic. She is among a very small but growing number of women who are walking out of abusive marriages despite the social and financial costs.

Her decision to seek a divorce from her husband was a blow to the prestige of both families, but now, she says, people have started accepting her and her new status.

"It's a hard life to be single and divorcee in India but I would rather be single than be in an abusive marriage," she says.

Shakti Dasi is another kind of single woman - a widow aged 65. I met her in Vrindavan, a holy city where large numbers of Indian widows take refuge if life with their family becomes unbearable.

"When my husband was alive, I had his protection," she says, tears welling up in her eyes and her voice choking.

"Then he died and I was like an orphan. My sons and daughters-in-law no longer cared about me. I was abused and beaten up by them. Once my son broke my legs and I decided, I didn't want to live with my family any more."

Like many of the widows in Vrindavan, who are mostly from poor, rural backgrounds, she had little to lose by leaving home. The life she'd taken decades to create had already been taken from her.

Now she lives in a small brick shack, impoverished and alone.

The reasons for tensions between widows and their families are primarily economic, says Winnie Singh, a social activist who works with the women of Vrindavan. A widow is an extra mouth to fill and could try to stake a claim to the family property.

Winnie tells me the fact that these widows don't resist is deeply rooted in their culture.

"They still hope when they die, that their son probably will come and light their pyre," she says. "A son who breaks your legs, a son who hits you so hard that your skull breaks, a son who is willing to put cow dung in your mouth - and yet you want the same son to come and light your pyre. We need to break that mind-set also, somewhere."

Living as young, unmarried adult woman in a women's hostel in the Indian capital in the late 1990s, I realised how, in the name of protection, women are sometimes excessively fenced off. You had to be back in your room by seven in the evening, you could not leave the hostel before six in the morning, you could not invite male friends, and you had a quota of nights out with the consent of a "local guardian".

Those of my women friends who were single and lived alone faced similar problems. Getting a place to live in was tough, there was the unrelenting gaze of the landlord and neighbours to contend with, and male friends visiting them were a no-no.

Things are changing but the process is glacial. India is a complex society that reveres goddesses and yet seems to discriminate against living women in equal measure.

Interviewing Indian women over the last few months has been an uncomfortable experience.

If you are single, you could just fade away. If you are separated or divorced, you may struggle all your life - so many women stay in a bad marriage and suffer. And in some families the prospect of being widowed does not bear thinking about.2012年，一名女學生在德里的一輛公交車上被姦殺。這一事件屢屢登上新聞頭條，引發了對女性承受暴力行爲的抗議。但是在印度，女性還身處其他困境，單身女性更甚——她們一般無法過正常生活。

我第一次見她時，她穿着亮黃色的長袍，扎兩條整齊的長辮，安靜地在一個村民的家裏做家務。

那一瞬間，我還以爲庫多是個年少的傭人，一個幫忙做飯、清洗、抹地的小姑娘，就像其他幾百萬個在印度密集的城市和鄉村的家庭裏工作的小姑娘一樣。

可是，當她轉身，閃過一絲羞澀的笑，我纔看到那是張更年長的臉。然後帶着隱隱的羞愧感，我發現她也不是傭人。

庫多與她的寡婦母親、叔伯姑嬸和他們各自的家人住在一個擁擠的大家庭裏。她有四個兄弟姐妹，在印度其他地方工作生活。她父親已經去世很長時間了。

庫多50歲上下，未婚。她的家族不斷變大，而她卻日漸淡化，每天做着辛苦枯燥的家務和苦力。家人平日裏敲敲打打的聲音與她無關。他們把她叫做家裏的“晦氣”。她家裏一個人告訴我：“有時候，我感覺她根本不存在。”

我問她，你爲什麼穿得想個小姑娘啊。

她母親代她回答了：“她沒結婚，所以她穿衣服不能看起來像個結了婚的女人。”

這個家庭不肯相信一個女性不結婚就能長大。所以對他們來說，庫多仍然是個兒童。[或者“童女”？]

印度有許多因爲未婚而直接被人遺忘的女性，庫多隻是其中一個。這不是她們選擇的，而是扭曲額命運和環境使然。

在一個長久以來認爲女性只有嫁了人——新郎由女方的家長決定——才能完整的社會中，單身是殘酷而難以忍受的。

根據2001年的人口普查，印度有大約四千萬30歲以上的單身婦女——原因包括離婚、分居和未婚。這還僅是保守估計。

她們中許多人正開始反對傳統觀念。她們選擇保持單身，竭力維持自己的生活，而不像庫多一樣，依靠家庭勉強的一些施捨活下去。印度迅速發展的城市也開始慢慢地接受了單身女性。但對於那些每天面對單身困境的女性來說，這一變化極其緩慢而痛苦。

如果說單身有時候把女性淡化成背景，那麼離婚會給她們帶來災難性的打擊。離婚隨之而來的社會污點仍然沉重地籠罩在女性頭上，尤其是那些依賴丈夫的家庭婦女。

這還不算。如果一對夫妻離婚，女方一般會努力爭取獲得夫妻共同財產中屬於自己的一部分。然而，哪怕是她們應得的財產，也會因爲印度慢如龜速的法庭而卡在訴訟裏，變成一紙空文。

25歲來自孟買的迪帕裏，就是一個這樣的例子：緩慢的司法系統和社會污點在不聲不響中同流合污，把一個離婚母性——尤其是有孩子的離婚女性——推入困境。

她和4歲的兒子住在一個醜陋的單間裏，平時打一些零工：在婚禮上當服務員，或是做女傭。

她的丈夫拋棄了她，然後提出了離婚訴訟。

她說，他們分開的這三年裏，她沒有得到任何撫養費。很多人都說，她非常想和丈夫複合，哪怕他過去常常打她。

“我不想離婚。我兒子和我都需要一個父親的名字，纔不會有社會污點。要不然別人會說我兒子是偷生的。”迪帕裏說。

“我不想別人叫我離過婚的女人，所以我寧願就這樣過下去。我也想過，如果離婚，我兒子長大後會怎麼看我！好女人都不會離婚，你知道的。”

照這樣的邏輯，30多歲有份工作的倪米莎不符合“好女人”的描述。她就是那些極少數但在不斷增加的女人之一——她們不惜社會和金錢的代價，走出那個受凌辱的婚姻。

她要求與丈夫離婚的決定，給兩個家庭的聲望都帶來重大一擊。但是現在，她說人們開始接受她和她的新身份了。

她說：“在印度，單身和離婚的女人過得非常苦。但是我寧願單身，也不要在婚姻裏受虐待。”

沙克提達希是另一種單身女性——一個65歲的寡婦。我在沃林達文遇見她。那是個聖城，許多印度寡婦都來這裏避難，離開家裏難以忍受的生活。

“我丈夫還在的時候，他會保護我，”她說，淚水奪眶而出，聲音也哽咽了。

“他死了之後，我就想一個孤兒。我的兒子們和兒媳們再也不管我了。我被他們打，被他們虐待。有一次我兒子打斷了我的腿，我就決定，再也不要和家人一起過了。”

沃林達文其他很多寡婦，大多來自貧窮的農村。她就和她們一樣，離開家之前就已經一無所有。她用了幾十年創造的生活已經被奪走了。

現在她住在一個狹小的磚塊房裏，一貧如洗，孤苦伶仃。

溫妮·辛格是一個針對沃林達文的婦女的社會活動者。她說，寡婦們和家人之間關係緊張的原因主要是經濟原因。多一個寡婦就多一張吃飯的嘴，還有可能要求得到家庭的財產。

溫妮告訴我，這些寡婦不反抗，是有很深的文化根源的。

“她們還巴望着她們死的時候，兒子可能會過來爲她們，然後爲她們火葬，”她說。“一個把你腿打斷的兒子，一個打你打得頭骨破裂的兒子，一個會把牛糞往你嘴裏塞的兒子，你竟然還想讓他們過來看你，幫你火葬。我們需要在有些地方打破這種心態。”

20世紀90年代末期，我曾經住在印度首都的女性招待所。當時，作爲一個年輕、未婚的成年女性，我已意識到，印度的社會有時候是怎樣以保護之名把女性過分地隔離起來。你必須在晚上7點之前回房，早上6點之前不能走出旅社，不能邀請男性朋友，而且只有“本地監護人”同意，才能在某幾個晚上出門。

我的那些單身而且獨自生活的女性朋友也面臨着相似的問題。要找一個住的地方很難，房東和鄰居們無情的目光讓人寒心，男性朋友過來拜訪簡直是禁忌。

雖然情況在變，但冰凍三尺非一日之寒。印度是個複雜的社會，人們崇拜女神，然而對現實生活中同樣的婦女卻似乎帶有歧視。

採訪印度女性的過去幾個月，是一段讓人難受的經歷。

如果單身，你只會慢慢淡化。可如果分居或是離婚，你可能要掙扎一輩子——所以許多女性只能留在悲慘的婚姻裏飽受痛苦。而且在一些家庭，成爲寡婦甚至是讓人想也不敢想的事情。