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Jatindra Dash in Jagatsinghpur
Vermilion still marks their foreheads and bangles tinkle on their wrists, as scores of women in Orissa refuse to accept that a cyclone widowed them two years ago.
Women in several villages along coastal Orissa continue to sport the symbols of a married Hindu woman even though the administration has repeatedly told them that their husbands died, swallowed by the swollen sea during the deadly storm in 1999.
These widows of disaster spend hours each day looking out to the sea in the hope of spotting their husbands' boats bobbing back ashore. They refuse to accept their widowed status because they never saw their husbands' bodies.
The October 29-30 cyclone had ripped through 12 coastal districts in Orissa, displacing about 30 million people and killing 10,000.
"I was told that my husband had died in the cyclone but those who informed me about of the death of my husband had not shown his body," said 37-year-old Sabitri Maiti of Suniti village, about 70 km from Jagatsinghpur.
Officials of the revenue department listed her husband among the dead and offered her compensation of Rs 75,000, but she refused to accept the money.
"My husband has not died. He may be somewhere and will return one day," said Jamuna, a villager in neighbouring Kendrapada district.
Fellow villagers have also tried to convince these women to accept their husbands' death, but in vain.
Indo-Asian News Service
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