And an old friend gave me a sari sometimes,' she says. 'I used to ask my sons to intervene with their wives but they shrugged their shoulders and said, 'What can we do?''

To placate her sons, she handed over the house to them, like so many widows who hope this will protect them against eviction. But one day, her daughters-in-law beat her and dragged her by

the hair out onto the street, forcing her out of her home forever.

Mistry ended up in Vrindavan, a Hindu holy town in northern India. Known as the City of Widows, it has attracted an estimated 10,000 women who have sought sanctuary there from the loathing they still inspire in many Indians who believe widows bring bad luck.

Fortunately for Mistry, someone told her about Amarbari, a widows' home run by Mohini Giri, a well-known women's activist who is trying to make Hindus realise widows are human. Mistry says she is happily settled at the home after arriving with only two brass pots and two cotton saris. As she watches a soap opera on television, Mistry is adamant she will never return home. 'No, I have no feelings left for my sons. I would never go back there,' she says.

Giri aims to reverse centuries of tradition that dictate what women must do when their husbands die. One small mercy is they no longer have to throw themselves into the flames of the funeral pyre, as used to happen until the British banned the barbarous practice, known as sati, in the 19th century - although there are still occasional reports of this happening in remote villages. But what continues is the tradition of widows being forced to live a spartan life. They are expected to fast, wear only white, break their bangles and stop wearing jewellery, stay away from happy occasions such as weddings and births and, in many cases, shave their heads. These rules are intended to demonstrate a widow is only half-human after her husband's death and must lead a life of penance until she can join her dearly departed in the afterlife.

Giri won't stand for this, which is why she hands out brightly coloured saris to the widows who come to Amarbari, even if they're wizened and toothless, and tells them to grow their hair, even if their elderly follicles are only going to produce a wisp or two.

'In India, a woman is only revered as a mother, daughter and wife,' says Giri, the former chairperson of the National Commission for Women. 'Without a man by her side, women have no status. When her husband dies, she is blamed for his death.'

At her home, the widows range in age from 25 to 95. One of the youngest is Anita Yadav, 30, who fled her home in Agra with her three children four months ago after her husband's death from alcohol poisoning. After becoming a widow, she realised almost instantly there was no place for her in her husband's or parents' home. The only person who 'wanted' her was her drunken brother-in-law. Widows are easy targets for sexual predators. He began forcing himself on her. One night, she says, he tried to rape her. When she protested to her mother-in-law, she says she was told to marry him or get out. She left, fearing he might assault her daughter, and went to her parents.

At her parent's home, also in Agra, Yadav says her three sisters-in-law made her life miserable.

'They hated having me there. I was a burden to them. They used to taunt my children, saying they

ate too much. I hated that,' says Yadav. One day, in despair, she began walking, anywhere, in any direction, with her children. She, too, arrived in Vrindavan, and found Amarbari.

Yadav's hair is long and she wears a maroon cotton sari that Giri gave her. Geeta Pande, who manages Amarbari when Giri is in New Delhi running her widows' charity, the Guild of Service, has enrolled Yadav's children in a local school. Now, Pande wants Yadav to take a medical training course that Amarbari offers so she can work as a hospital attendant.

'We can't do anything for the old ones except offer a haven, but for someone as young as Yadav, we must give her some training. We have a sewing course and soon, for the educated ones, we're going to offer computer training so they have a source of livelihood,' says Pande.

Yadav's children are shouting and playing in a nearby courtyard. They are the only children at the shelter. 'They're getting more love from the women here than they did at home,' says Yadav. 'They haven't mentioned home even once.'

Amarbari, which is Bengali for 'my home', is different from other ashrams (religious retreats) in Vindravan. It provides the women with regular meals, clothes and training that will give the younger ones some economic independence. But the stories from widows throughout the town are the same: sexual assault, cruelty and abandonment.

Indian culture teaches children to revere their mothers. Yet the moment their husband dies, many Hindu widows find their children turn on them, abuse them for being a burden and throw them out of their homes. Speak to any widow in Vrindavan and they'll tell you the worst pain of all is to be abandoned by the children they loved.

Luckily, Giri has high-powered friends, including Raj Loomba, 61, a London-based businessman. Loomba was raised in India by his mother, who was widowed at an early age. Later, he went to live in Britain. He set up the Pushpawati Loomba Memorial trust in 1998, in memory of his mother, to educate the children of poor Indian widows. The president of the trust is Cherie Blair, wife of Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, who recently visited India and met a few of the country's 33 million widows.

'We educate about 1,000 children of widows throughout India by giving them a monthly allowance. I realise 1,000 is not a huge figure but it's a start. We hope to raise it to several thousand soon,' says Loomba, adding the trust's only criteria is the children they educate should be fatherless and their mothers earn less than 1,500 Indian rupees ($265) a month. He has also enlisted the support of Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson, who raised #100,000 ($1.5 million) for the trust earlier this year through an appeal to passengers on his airline.

While there are many ashrams in Vrindavan, not all look after their widows as well as Amarbari. Its rooms are small and rudimentary, but the home is clean, there is plenty of food and the atmosphere is warm. In other Vrindavan ashrams, widows get squalid lodgings and no food, forcing them to beg from tourists or sing bhajans (devotional songs) in the temples for six hours a day for just 20 rupees. Some are forced into prostitution by temple priests and pimps.

The treatment of widows is not an issue many Hindu religious or nationalist leaders wish to tackle. Five years ago, Indian film director Deepa Mehta tried to make a movie about the widows of Vrindavan, but was forced to quit after violent protests by Hindu leaders who claimed she was maligning Hinduism.

The streets of Vrindavan teem with widows. As I approach the famous Bhajan Ashram, a 10-minute drive from Amarbari, I hear women chanting 'Hare Khrishna' inside the big hall to the sound of clanging bells and cymbals. Vrindavan has more than 5,000 temples and scores of western Hare Khrishna followers. Standing outside, waiting to enter the ashram, I'm instantly surrounded by a sea of widows, all eager to talk. A few are so dreadfully ravaged by age and poverty that I instinctively flinch, averting my eyes from the shape squatting on the ground near my feet - a bundle of bones huddled inside a tatty sari. Some want money from me, or clothes. Their saris are thin and worn. They touch my arm and tell me how they have ended up in this ugly, dirty, congested town so far away from their own homes, where they once led normal family lives.

'Today, I'm talking to you, but I can't sit at your wedding or come to your house if you have a child. People think I will bring bad luck to them,' says Sarojini Das, 75, a widow who came to Vrindavan from Calcutta nearly 40 years ago.

After hearing their stories, it is a relief to return to the tranquillity of Amarbari, where there is sadness, certainly, but not the same squalor and despair. The only time Pande says she feels hopeless is when she writes to families telling them their mother is at Amarbari and gets no response.

Has anyone - an uncle, a brother, son or nephew - experienced a twinge of compassion or guilt and come to take them home? 'I've not come across a single case where a family has felt guilty and taken them home,' Pande says. 'Indians will do anything to have boys - even abort female foetuses - but look what good it's done these women. And some of them have three or four sons.'