Separated for 46 years, couple ties knot again

KOLKATA: For forty-six years, Annapurna Hazra lived the life of a widow. Only to learn a few months ago that her husband was alive. On Sunday, she remarried' the man who had left her and their two toddling kids in a fit of anger. Nearly half a century and a lifetime later, she aga-in wore vermillion and a coloured saree.
Some called Annapurna twice born.Some say, it's a cruel joke by fate.
Annapurna and Panchkari Hazra every year of pain and separation creased on their faces stood and stared at each other for a long time after he smeared sindoor on her sinthi. They said nothing, posed for the cameras, and quietly put their arms around each other's shoulders.
Their children celebrated. "We were very young when our father left home. For all our lives we remember seeing Ma dressed in a white saree. No one knew whether he was alive. She didn't believe he was dead but social pressure and the stigma of being left by her husband proved so strong that she chose to become a widow. As the years passed, we had lost all hope of ever seeing Baba again," said Arun Hazra, the couple's elder son.
When Panchkari left home in 1952, after a quarrel with his father, Arun was five and brother Tarun just two. Panchkari first went to Dhanbad, then to Asansol. After a few years, he came to Howrah, where he lived over a decade before moving to Behala's Roy Bahadur Road in the late 1980s. Didn't he miss his wife and children all this while?
"I remembered their faces but my father's words haunted me," said Panchkari.
As the years went by, relatives and neighbours took Panchkari Hazra for dead. During Puja this year, an old friend saw him in Behala's Chanditala and rushed back to tell Tarun. "I took my wife and daughter and went to see him. I had to tell him who I was. He talked with my wife and daughter for some time. But when I asked him to return home he refused, saying he had taken an oath that he would never set foot in that house. I came back dejected," Tarun said.
He told his mother and elder brother about meeting Panchkari. They didn't believe him at first. Arun, too, decided to meet his father. For the next few months, relatives and friends tried desperately to convince him to return home. Finally, Panchkari agreed.
On the village's insistence, a remarriage' ceremony and a feast were hurriedly organized on Sunday. "Social pressure had forced Annapurna to don a widow's robes. She kept nursing the hope that her husband was alive. Now that he has returned we thought it fit to have a small ceremony to confirm her married status," said Sudakshina Ghosh, a former councillor of Bhatpara municipality and a neighbour of the Hazras.