Mr Raj Loomba, an Indian taking global humanitarian leadership

The UN General Assembly has unanimously declared 23 June “INTERNATIONAL WIDOWS DAY”, following a sustained effort by Mr Raj Loomba and the Loomba Foundation.

For many years, Mr Loomba has taken the lead to draw attention to the plight of widows and has taken action to alleviate the plight of widows - in memory of his own mother, who was a widow.

My mother was also a widow, and had an incredible struggle to enable myself (I was eight years old when my father died) and my younger brother and sister to survive.

There are some 245 million widows around the world, many of them poor and destitute.

There is the much worse problem of "abandoned wives" - a growing cancer, even in the West.

Meanwhile, do spare a thought and a prayer, and make any and every possible effort to draw attention to, and to use the occasion of, International Widows' Day to improve the situation for widows around the world, but specially in India.