WE were taking photographs of a funeral procession on the Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi when we saw her looking down from a balcony. She was staring blankly at the procession as it made its way through Manikarnika, the oldest ghat in Varanasi where the dead are cremated. Who was she and what was she doing there? Shakuntala Devi’s story could well be the story of the thousands of widows, abandoned by their families in Varanasi. Her husband died 21 years ago. A year later, her family brought here from Darbhanga in Bihar. Since then, she has lived in this crumbling house that she shares with another woman. She sleeps on the floor with a blanket for a bed in a room that has no roof and leads out to a balcony. The Manikarnika Ghat lies below.

She gets a visitor only once a year: her daughter who comes from Darbhanga. That annual visit is her only link with the past.

Shakuntala Devi was 50 when she came to Varanasi—she’s now almost 70. Her only window to the world is her balcony. She spends her day looking at people who stream in from all parts of the country to cremate their dead. She has spent the last 20 years of her life staring at death.

What flits through her mind every time she sees another death? Does someone else’s loss make her think of hers? Does the constant procession of death make her think of life? But Shankuntala Devi doesn’t speak out her thoughts aloud. Nor do the residents of another old age home for women run by the government in Durgakund, about 4 km from where Shakuntala Devi stays. The organisers are reluctant to let us talk to the women, but finally give in. Five minutes is the time they give us to talk to the residents and photograph them.

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