Irrfan Khan's wife Sutapa Sikdar shares poem about widows' pain by Literature Nobel winner Louise Gluck

It's been over 5 months since talented actor Irrfan Khan passed away earlier this year. And somehow, his wife Sutapa Sikdar is trying to come to terms with this reality. 

And while she is living each day with the actor's memories, Sutapa often takes to her social media accounts to share her feelings with her fans and followers. 

Taking to her Instagram account on Thursday, Sutapa, while sharing a beautiful yet heart-breaking poem by Louise Gluck, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature earlier today, expressed the pain she is going through while celebrating both 'life and death' alongside a photo of her husband Irrfan's grave in Mumbai, which was decorated with roses. 

The lines reflect on the deep anguish that a widow suffers and what goes in her mind when she has to deal with the irreparable loss in her life. 

The lines read as follows: 

I'll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that's just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes, new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
trying to decide about this new life.

Then they're in the cemetery, some of them
for the first time. They're frightened of crying,
sometimes of not crying. Someone leans over,
tells them what to do next, which might mean
saying a few words, sometimes
throwing dirt in the open grave.

And after that, everyone goes back to the house,
which is suddenly full of visitors.
The widow sits on the couch, very stately,
so people line up to approach her,
sometimes take her hand, sometimes embrace her.
She finds something to say to everybody,
thanks them, thanks them for coming.

In her heart, she wants them to go away.
She wants to be back in the cemetery,
back in the sickroom, the hospital. She knows
it isn't possible. But it's her only hope,
the wish to move backwards. And just a little,
not so far as the marriage, the first kiss.

Earlier, while responding to a social media user on Facebook, who pointed out that Irrfan's grave looked like a 'trash dumpster', Sutapa had replied by saying that women aren't allowed Muslim graveyards.

The user wrote, “Dear Sutapa, recently I saw a photo of Irrfan bhai’s graveyard. I was heartbroken, cause it’s only a few months and his graveyard looks like trash dumpster. I thought you planted ‘Rat ki Rani’ since he loved that plant. What happened? If the photo is real, then it’s a crying shame. If you have a real recent photo of the graveyard, please Post it.”

To this, Sutapa replied, "Women are not allowed in Muslim graveyards. Hence I have planted the raat Ki Rani in Igatpuri where I have a memory stone of his...where I have buried his fav things. I own that place Where I can sit for hours without anyone telling me I can’t sit next to him."

"He is there in his spirit. But that doesn’t mean the graveyard shouldn’t be tended ..but as far as how is a very questionable thing... The wild plants' grass has grown in rains.. It’s wild and beautiful is what I saw in the photo you are mentioning..its rains and plants come and they wither in the next season..and then one can clean it. Why should everything be exactly as per definition? And the plants have grown maybe for a purpose look closely," she concluded her post.