Losing a partner is a painful experience.
For many Indian widows, young and old, it is like having a glimpse of emptiness and desperation.
Being a widow is the start of putting on your shoulders a bigger responsibility of taking care of the children by yourself.
Statistics showed that in India there are around 33 million widows.
Because of this growing number, Renuka Chowdhury, India's Minister for Women and Child Development thought of giving widows a second chance of having fruitful endeavor by providing a set of initiatives to help them recover from losing their husbands.
Chowdhury aimed at giving the country's widows opportunities to work through proper training and skills development; sufficient motivation to live positively and whenever possible to remarry.
She believed that being a widow is not the end of the world.
There are still many ways of being productive and spending a good life.
However, Hinduism, a predominant Indian belief, opposes widows getting another marriage and society has a negative impression on this aspect.
The minister said surely there are a lot of pushing that needs to be done in improving the lives of millions of widows in India, especially that most of them are young and poor.
Citing the prevailing customary conditions of Indian widows, a woman can lose her dignity as well as her basic rights as she becomes a widow.
Many widows are usually secluded in towns like Vrindavan located in northern part of India.
Based on reports, there were more than 3,000 Indian widows abandoned in the area.
Other hundreds of widows were living in Hindu's holy towns such as Brajbhumi, Goverdhan and Mathura.
Most of these widows, according to reports, were surviving through charity or begging alms on the streets.
Chowdhury said many are talking about helping these women, but only a few steps were being done.
These women can still work; they only need proper training.
She added that it is necessary to conduct forums to help some women find matches and have a chance to remarry.
But some surveys showed that Indian widows preferred not to remarry so as not to violate the Hindu traditions.
However, the Indian government remains firm to make initiatives to uplift the conditions of these widows to have a better life.