Yoko: Give Widows a Chance

BY: RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL

Jun 25, LONDON (SMS) — What do the benighted widows of Vrindavan have in common with Yoko Ono, complete with folksy expensive panama hat and huge bumble-bee sunglasses? Answer: Raj Loomba, bullish British Indian businessman and his high-profile, celebrity-supported campaign to force the United Nations to declare June 23 International Widows Day.

Ono, 73, is arguably the world's most famous widow but that is not much of a disadvantage when her husband was John Lennon. In Vrindavan, city of widows, meanwhile, an estimated 16,000 husbandless women sing bhajans for a pittance and live on the margins of society.

On Friday, Ono made unprecedented cause with Vrindavan's widows, a further three million Indian women sans husbands and millions of other widows around the world. "Give widows a chance", she declared in an ironic parody of Lennon's famous anthem of peace, 'Give peace a chance.'

Watched by Cherie Booth Blair, wife of the British PM and a galaxy of some of the richest, most famous people in the UK; leading British politicians, ambassadors and actors; the secretary-general of the Commonwealth, Don McKinnon; Bollywood's ambassadors Jackie Shroff and Pooja Bedi and Indian minister for women and child development Renuka Chowdhury, Ono kicked off Loomba's cherished International Widows Day solemnities with pop panache.

"But I am here today as a widow," Ono insisted, adding that "it has been 25 years since my husband passed away and I still can't get used to the idea."

While Loomba, a portly multi-millionaire knitwear importer with friends in high places, looked on approvingly, Ono added, "Widowhood is not something that I thought about very much till I became one. Yet the figures are staggering, there are 100 million widows all over the world. India has more than a third of the total."

Blair, who had also managed to rope in her "friend", US senator Hillary Clinton, to champion Loomba's cause, declared that her goal was ensure International Widows Day gets the UN seal of approval.

Unusually for a woman who combines the stressful role as wife of the prime minister with looking after four children and pursuing a lucrative, high-profile career as human rights lawyer, Blair spent the whole day at Loomba's side at the Widows' Day conference and declared she was "very proud to be president of the Loomba Trust."

"Our ambitions go beyond India,"said Blair, "Raj and Veena Loomba first focussed on India and educating (widows') children there ... but widows all over the world face awful stigma and deprivation...we want International Widows Day to be a UN day."

If that happens, Loomba will arguably be the first Indian ever to single-handedly force through a special UN day. And all because of private family grief. Loomba's mother was left a 37-year-old widow with seven children on June 23, 1954.