“Lest We Forget: A Sisterhood Called White”- a unique exhibition by Kounteya Sinha, (one of India’s most potent and renowned visual storytellers), which for the first time raises the curtain on the unseen lives of Vrindavan’s widows by photographing them going about their daily lives inside the ashrams’ boundaries.

The exhibition was inaugurated by His Excellency C.V. Ananda Bose, the Governor of West Bengal, Renu Ma- India’s oldest Widow (106 years old), Winnie Singh, Renowned Humanitarian, Oiendrilla Ray Kapur, Curator & Creative Director, Kounteya Sinha and Rana Pandey, Photographers of the exhibition. 

The show features 35 photographs.

The exhibition’s photographer, Mr. Kounteya Sinha, is renowned throughout the world for his unmatched human storytelling. He spent 11 days in Vrindavan documenting the lives of the widows there. They were thrilled to converse with a Bengali and reveal their daily routine, which consists of singing bhajans in the morning for a cup of tea and biscuits and a meager amount of money, begging on the streets until dusk, and then making their way back to their shared shanties, which they pay an astounding Rs. 1000 a month. In the evening, some move to the lanes that line the ghats, as there are more opportunities to find charities there. The number of these impoverished widows is a mystery to everyone.

“We are the first men to ever live with them, closely following their daily life of devotion and dignity. This is because it is the first time that the subtleties of their better life in a new India have been documented from inside the precincts of the ashrams. Ninety percent of the estimated 20,000 widows in Vrindavan are thought to be from Bengal. Widows now own pension cards, Aadhar cards, zero bank accounts, and the right to citizenship. They are receiving training in programs for generating income and enhancing their skills. They are starting their businesses gradually and steadily. These images are meant to convey to you the beauty of their sisterhood in a changing India, away from home and their new family. This program celebrates the color white that had earlier become their prison. But that is not the case anymore” said Koutenya Sinha.

The show will be open to the public till 19^th January at the Kolkata Centre For Creativity.

Priyanka Dutta