Same old story of domestic violence & suffering woman

Dowry and domestic violence are as old as the world’s first ever crime — rape. In India especially, the two evils have co-existed for centuries without anything being done by the society to root them out.

You might lull yourself into thinking that all is well on the urban Indian woman’s front, that she is empowered enough to take care of her rights and her dignity.

But here’s a story that will tell you how wrong you can be, that we, as a society, are genetically impaired to take care of issues like domestic violence despite new laws, newer mindsets and education. And, alarmingly, it is the woman who decides to give in to suffering rather than think of opting out of a marriage to a rotten man.

Take the case of X. She lives in a B-town of Punjab, is a graduate with specialisation in Library Science. Her parents married her off with much fanfare to a well-placed man who, on the face of it, appeared to be responsible. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Just under a year down the line, the girl who had silently suffered beatings, starvation and extreme pressure of work under the instructions of her mom-in-law and husband, was about to deliver. Having been put on a near starvation diet by the in-laws, she was hardly likely to have a normal delivery. They took her to a Government hospital, all the time sparring about who should make the payments — they or the girl’s family. After a caesarean delivery, and when the girl’s parents had left for their home after the giving rituals, the doctor was aghast to hear from her husband that he wanted his wife to be discharged just a day after the operation. The doctors advised him to not take such a hasty decision but he would not listen to them. Finally, they made him sign the discharge papers and he took his almost half dead wife and the baby out of the hospital.

What happened to that girl next is unbelievable. Both her husband and her mother-in-law made her take a rigorous walk home, home being 18 km away from the hospital. And it was not just one plain road. She had to trek through a rocky upward spiral into the mountains! Once she reached home, she was not given much to eat or time to recuperate. Fifteen days later, her sister got a call from the girl who broke down on the phone, saying she was going to die. As the sister rushed to her house, the sight that greeted her was horrifying. The girl, only a skeleton, was lying in a pool of blood and pus, and in the same clothes she had been made to wear at the hospital. The room was stinking and if the sister is to be believed, the dalia lying in a stained pot with just a pinch of salt was all she got to eat!

That was not the end of it. When she raised her kurta to show what was wrong with her, the sister almost fainted in shock. All her caesarean stitches lay open, pus flowing down her thighs, and her uterus was hanging out. The husband was nowhere to be found and the mother-in-law was relaxing in the sun on another floor of the house, not bothered about what was happening to her daughter-in-law.

The sister rushed the poor girl to the nearby hospital where the doctor gave her a verbal lashing, asking why the in-laws were allowed to do this to the new mother. The girl was treated and took a month to recover from this ghastly opening up of her wound. Needless to say, neither her husband nor any of her in-laws bothered to find out whether she and her son were alive or dead as she recuperated at her parental home.

The point here is as much about how vile her in-laws were as it is about the society-tied-up parents who, despite the saga of suffering, thought it was best to send the poor girl back to her in-laws. “What will the neighbours say if she returns,” was the only refrain they could muster up. There is nothing new in this syndrome which besets all sorts of families in all sorts of strata. The girl’s parents, otherwise very nice people, could not muster up enough courage to seek punitive action against the husband-mother duo who were so animalistic in their approach that they did not even bother about the little baby which was their own flesh and blood.

Meanwhile, after a month, the girl was sent back to her husband’s house to bear the brunt silently. She was made to do all household chores and had to literally beg for some money to buy her son his daily dose of milk and fruit, seldom getting it from the husband who was mostly drunk, abusive, violent and asking for dowry. She continues to live in this scenario after her parents failed to reason out with her husband who, as of now, has lost his job and has been pressurising her to bring in the money from her parents. She is barely 35 kg now, totally malnourished and almost breaking down to the circumstances around her!

Yet, the parents have fought shy of seeking either police intervention or bringing her back and starting divorce proceedings. Over and above this parental disregard of their daughter’s safety, there is also this syndrome that the girl lives in — she is convinced she is fated to suffer and die soon. That there could be a better life awaiting her post a divorce, is something she feels guilty of even fleetingly thinking about.

And the girl is not alone in taking the decision to brave it all till death do us apart. Our society has for generations churned out girl children who are told that to suffer is the ultimate test of life a woman needs to pass. That once a marriage takes place, she is married for life and should die serving her in-laws. There is nobody to help her out of domestic violence, mental torture and constant dowry demands.

There have been so many cases wherein the parents and the girl have decided to keep giving the in-laws another chance. So many women die at the altar of domestic violence, not being open enough to walk into a police station and seek redress from a hellish life. They are mentally conditioned not to think about themselves and about merging their identity into the pots and pans of the kitchen, when that is they are not being beaten up black and blue. Parents know this, but take the advise of the community people into leaving their hapless daughter all alone to fend for herself. They would much rather cry over her funeral than bring her out of her predicament. Society wins, woman dies, parents grieve, husband goes on to marry another woman with a fatter purse perhaps. That’s the story of the Indian woman — scripted by her parents, moulded by societal chauvinism and fuelled by her own despicable decision to suffer silently.

Source: The Sunday Pioneer, 1 April, 2012