VRINDAVAN, INDIA
Indian widow Mira Dasi, 62, poses for a photograph at the Meerasahabhagini Ashram in Vrindavan, some 135 kilometres (80 miles) south of New Delhi on March 5, 2014, ahead of International Women's Day. Dasi has lived in the ashram for eight years and says, “A person who is good can find every place good. God keeps me always happy. I can only live here in Vrindavan, not anywhere else, not even in my town in Bengal because Vrindavan is where I find God." Banished by families who see them as a financial drain, or believe they bring bad fortune, desperately poor widows have for centuries travelled to the northern city of Vrindavan, where the Hindu god Krishna is said to have grown up, to pray and wait to die. Traditionally, Vrindavan’s widows sung hymns and begged in the pilgrimage city on the banks of the Yamuna River, living in seclusion and shame and expected to dress in white, signifying the loss of colour from their lives. The Meerasahabhagini Ashram run by the Sulabh International NGO offers a place where some of Vrindavan’s estimated 15,000 widows can live together, providing support and friendship that bind them into a community. International Women's Day falls on March 8.