your bridge home
Saints and Poets
A widowed princess of Mewar would not stop singing in public. The family sent her something to drink.
Mirabai was married into the most prestigious house in Rajasthan and it did not hold her for long.
Mirabai was born around 1498 at Kudki, in Marwar, into the Rathore Rajputs, and grew up at Merta. In 1516 she was married to Bhoj Raj, the crown prince of Mewar.
The Sisodia house at Chittor. The senior Rajput line. And one that took its dignity extremely seriously.
In 1521 Bhoj Raj died of wounds taken in battle.
She was about twenty-three, and a widow in a royal Rajput household, and there were two acceptable futures. She could go into the fire with her husband, which the house regarded as the honourable course. Or she could live out her life inside the women's quarters, in white, invisible, silent, decorative of the family's reputation.
She did neither.
Mirabai kept singing, in public, to Krishna.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.