“Before leaving Pune, I went to the Burning Ghat again. There was a pyre. This time women were also present at the funeral. They stayed at a certain distance from the pyre except the wife of the dead man, who stood closer. She broke her bangle with a stone. There was also red powder scattered on the ground. ‘Why did she break her bangle?’ I asked a man next to me. ‘From now on, she won’t wear either bangles or colored saris. Moreover, she won’t put the sindoor on her forehead. It is the spot of red powder on the forehead of Indian married women,’ he answered. ‘What color should her sari be?’ ‘It should be white.’
“At that moment, I recalled my grandmother who had worn black clothes since her husband’s death. In India, it was the same. The color was different, white in India and black in Sicily, but the essence of the love toward their husbands didn’t differ.”

This is an excerpt from The Vibrations of Words: second edition by Ettore Grillo
Ettore Grillo author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
-Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo