Post-marriage depression: The under diagnosed, untreated reality

Post-marriage depression is a reality. It is more than the after-nuptial blues and mood swings that a married woman goes through. To understand the gravity of the situation in India, take a look at the following statistics by a national survey conducted in 2016:

31% of married women are physically abused in the form of slapping or punching.

12% of those who report being physically abused also report at least one of the following injuries as a result of the violence: bruises , injury, sprains, dislocation or burns, wounds, broken bones or broken teeth and severe burns.

10% have suffered ‘severe domestic violence’, such as burning or attack with a weapon.

Violence and Silence
The above statistics are widely distributed for women across class, caste, geography and age groups in India. Perpetual violence can lead to a woman feeling isolated, not wanting to engage in social behaviour within family or outside and a perennial mode of panic and anxiety. This violence is perpetual because it is most often labeled as an ‘adjustment phase’ wherein the ‘adjustment’ is of course almost always by the woman.

The situation is further intensified when the woman chooses to remain silent against violence.The notions of a daughter-in-law as a “bearer of a family’s izzat (pride)” and “gai jaisi seedhi aur shaant” (as calm and decent as a cow) ensure that violence is carried out as ‘normal’ and then either kept a secret between the couple or amongst the family. If a woman chooses to voice her opinions, there are enough sanctions that the parents and in-laws impose on the woman through rhetorics like ‘Jis ghar mein doli aaye, arthi bhi wahi se uthni chahiye‘ (A girl should only exit dead from her married home). Hence, the woman is devoid of her parental support too, especially if she plans to quit the marriage. Such expectations that family and society at large place on a woman requires her to be an epitome of sacrifice but is she always prepared for it?

EXPECTATIONS THAT FAMILY AND SOCIETY AT LARGE PLACE ON A WOMAN REQUIRES HER TO BE AN EPITOME OF SACRIFICE BUT IS SHE ALWAYS PREPARED FOR IT?

Loss of Agency
The word ‘agency’ refers to the control one has over own choices and decisions. Most marriages bring with them a powerful agency for the husband and his parents whereas a loss of agency for the married woman.

Transition from ‘Ms’ to ‘Mrs’, parental home full of concern to post-marriage home full of responsibilities and a ‘watchful’ environment, maiden name to a different (or adding a) surname, decorating oneself with jewellery are only few of the zillion changes that a woman goes through, starting right the day after the wedding. Whether women succumb to these transitions or resist them, whether they succeed in resisting or lose their battle, either of the cases bring stress to the mind and a realization of loss of control over decisions she can make independently.

WHETHER WOMEN SUCCUMB TO TRANSITIONS OR RESIST THEM, WHAT COMES IS, STRESS TO THE MIND AND A REALIZATION OF LOSS OF CONTROL OVER DECISION SHE CAN MAKE INDEPENDENTLY.

In a recent exchange of experiences on a Facebook mother’s group, several women stated that losing control over our own choices is stressful in its own right, but even when women try to ‘mend’ the situation by attempting to ‘belong’ to the family in order to share the same status of decision-making, it may not yield intended outcomes. One of the mothers stated, “I made all possible attempts to ‘belong’ to the family. But there were always these extensive blast from the past talks, family jokes and secrets, all in front of me to make sure I was alienated.”

“Its been ten years of my marriage and now I have given up the idea that I will ever ‘belong’ to their family. And on hindsight I feel, if they never had to struggle to belong to me, why should I?”

The period of post-marriage depression could be incessant. Symptoms could range from persistent anxiety to not wanting to engage in pleasure-related activities including sex, restlessness, irritability, crying excessively, sleeping too much or too little. While most women express that it is at its peak in the first 3 years of marriage, but eventually it becomes a way of life and frequent vacations, work days and time spent with children simply become strategies to distract oneself. But can depression be treated with distractions? If anything, it only aggravates the agony and testifies that the situation is un-solvable.

The Loop of Double Guilt 
In an interaction with a working woman who is three years into her marriage, she mentioned an interesting phenomena that led to her depression – double guilt. She shared, “While I am at constant guilt at work for not paying expected attention to my family needs – taking care of in-laws, cooking for them, keeping the house spick and span, I am also at constant guilt at work for not being productive enough due to the stress that I carry from home and my inability to ‘switch off’ as my boss expects, as I step into my office!” This double guilt led her to a loss of belief in her own self that she could do anything right at all! And this was a vicious circle as the more she was guilty, the more it impacted her home and work life negatively and vice versa. Feelings of guilt, hopelessness and pessimism are distinct symptoms of post-marriage depression.

THIS DOUBLE GUILT LED HER TO A LOSS OF BELIEF IN HER OWN SELF THAT SHE COULD DO ANYTHING RIGHT AT ALL!

The vignette above is a classic example of the gaslighting mechanism that society most often uses for women in post-marriage depression. In other words, whatever a woman experiences to be wrong with the institution of marriage is blamed upon her – her guilt, her inefficiency, her ‘selfish’ choices. The loop of double guilt doesn’t just tear a woman apart between home and work, but also amongst relationships with self, partner and his family.

In another conversation around instances of post-marriage depression, a young married woman shared that, “To live an independent and private life, I and my husband decided to move out of the joint family. We took the decision even before we got married. But possibly my husband took it lightly and didn’t really convince his parents about staying separately and so, when we became firm about moving out, his parents were utterly disappointed and continue to be. My husband and I have had perennial arguments around this. I also feel (double) guilty for pushing my husband for a separate house when he is already going through difficulties at his business front.”

Thus, a woman, in order to resist, enters a zone where she feels alone, anxious, planning eternally to make her life better while at the same time being labelled as selfish and trying to rob the son off the family. ‘Bahu ke aate hi beta badal jata hai‘ (With the entry of the daughter-in-law, the son changes) is a common accusation directed at newly married women in all TV soaps as well as real life.

In-Laws, Laws and Outlaws

We treat post-marriage depression as an outlaw, as if it just doesn’t exist, we struggle with a law for marital rape and we want to portray in-laws/parents as godly creatures who need to be cared for by the children against all odds. Consider the law of Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007   for instance. “In normal circumstances, a wife is expected to be with the family of the husband after the marriage,” stated a supreme court ruling to sustain the law which also dismissed the wife’s attempt to kill herself as a plot to ‘torture’ her husband and his relatives.

Such legal frameworks and (similar) mindsets are a disastrous recipe aimed for a woman to enter into depression with no exit. They also attribute undue power to the identity of the husband and in-laws for life to centre only around them and empowers them to make all choices for the newly wed woman, be it what she wears or her career. Shared below is an instance from the life of a woman who was reflecting on her post-marriage depression after several years of marriage.

“I was not used to saying thank you and sorry in my (maiden) family and this caused a lot of friction with my mother-in-law who basically thought/thinks the world should revolve around her. She was constantly getting into arguments with all and sundry and my husband kept telling me to let things go. I went into a shell for letting myself into such a situation and not standing up for myself. I was also not allowed to work in the initial year as the job I was offered involved traveling.”

She also went on to say that to resolve the depression, her only option was to confront her mother-in-law and further break all her ties, amidst which the relationship with her husband dwindled too. And here we are, as married women, fighting for our own identity and agency amidst periods of guilt and swill. While some of us tread that path, still many ignore and move on with ‘This too shall pass’ attitude. But neither of these eventually are addressed directly to shaking the foundations of the institution of patriarchy, from where it all stems.

Parting Thoughts?
One of my ex-bosses once remarked in a jovial conversation – the development of a country is directly proportional to the number of single women in that country. Funny or not, if most marriages end up giving us women depression, there might be some truth here! To address the most sought after question that came up during the discussions around this topic: ‘So what do we do about it’? While the answers can vary depending on the complexity of the situations in each family but as a collective, two steps can be identified:

Acknowledge! Don’t let it pass and allow ‘time’ to heal it. Know that what you are going through is not Monday blues, not an ‘adjustment phase’ and not your inability to cope up. It is post-marriage depression which comes with clear symptoms and needs treatment as with most other kinds of depression.

Resist! As difficult as it may sound, but know that resisting is the only building block to heal, because this is not your individual life that one needs to sympathize with, but a social evil that we, as women all need to fight back. Marriage is a patriarchal institution and in that sense post-marriage depression is a by-product, not just side-effect, of this institution. And yes, women who would often remark ‘I am lucky to have a good husband/in-laws’, ‘My life is better after marriage instead’ also must not alienate themselves with the cause because clearly all practices, phenomena and identity mechanisms in patriarchy are interconnected. So when we resist one, we are resisting the larger structure. And whether this resistance should be an individual level or a collective one, is a thought I’ll leave you with.

MARRIAGE IS A PATRIARCHAL INSTITUTION AND IN THAT SENSE POST-MARRIAGE DEPRESSION IS A BY-PRODUCT, NOT JUST SIDE-EFFECT, OF THIS INSTITUTION.

(Source: FII)

The unspeakable husband’s name and the tradition of silence

The society has various prescribed traditions for women that they are expected to follow without questioning, sometimes even by force. One such tradition in the institution of marriage is the practice of women not calling their husbands by their name. While at first thought, it may not seem like a very important issue, but delving further into the customary practice for its reasons and given arguments reveals the deep-rooted male domination and chauvinism that lies underneath.

A number of arguments are given in support of this practice – the most common being that the husband traditionally, would be older than the wife, and hence it is in line with the Indian tradition of not calling elders by their name.

This argument might have made sense if and only if, the practice was limited to husbands older in age. In traditional Indian marriages, women are often instructed to not say the name of any of their in-laws, irrespective of the age. The cases of women calling their in-laws of the same generation and age (sometimes even younger) as bhaiya and didi is not rare. It is taken to be an unsaid rule that daughters-in-law are supposed to respect their in-laws simply by virtue of them being her in-laws. No questions asked.

Another common reasoning given in support of this tradition takes root in Indian traditional philosophy. The idea that everything on earth is a part of a duality, and one is never complete without the other extends to marital relationships where the husband and wife are seen as two sides of the same coin.

The roles of visionary-actualiser is a major part of this philosophy, according to which one plays the superior role of the visionary (providing light and guidance) and the other follows through to reach actualization. Even though philosophically, anybody can play the role of the visionary, the role has traditionally been accorded to the husband. The fixed belief of men being the bread winners of the family is taken to be the justification of male superiority. This unquestioning respect that must be bestowed upon husbands is the source of many regressive mindsets where the husband is seen as an absolute superior.

A more dogmatic justification given to this tradition of naming (or rather un-naming) takes route in the Vedic philosophy of the Prana-maya kosh. According to this philosophy, the respect that the wife accords to the husband acts as a rejuvenating force for the male psyche, and helps the male to regularly regain his strength and thus prolong his life. The wife then, by calling the husband by his name, is said to be lessening the lifespan of the husband. Even though a similar form of respect is expected by the husband too, to enhance the nurturing spirit of the wife and thereby her life, the concept is largely lost in the society, and the selective and hypocritical traditions bear witness to it.

It is very similar to the festival of Karva Chauth, where the wife is supposed to fast from sunrise to sunset for the longevity of the husband, but the husband is not expected to do anything such. Whether or not these practices hold scientific validity, the gestures alone are enough to point out the inherent patriarchy in these traditions.

These traditions are so deeply entrenched in our society that they often become internalised as norms that no-one cares to critique. The patriarchal idea of providing a God-like stature to the husband is not unheard of, and women continue to hold on to these beliefs unquestioningly. The practice of never uttering the husband’s name is taken as an obvious fact, because the husband is God-like while the wife is a lesser human. The following video by Video Volunteers shows how this tradition operates not just by force, by also by internalisation.

While adhering to this language conduct is often regarded as an insignificant part of life, that women are told to adhere to and overlook, the repercussions of not following this tradition has had severe punishments for women in many incidents, that makes one realise the importance of considering these issues with all seriousness in daily life.

Take for example the following case from Odisha, where a woman was ostracised from the community for addressing her in-laws by name. Such drastic punishments, for something that cannot even be logically called a mistake shows the obsession of the male dominant society to keep their women under their thumb.

While there is a strong need to address this issue, it is equally important to address it at all levels of the society. Urban areas have started to see a slow departure from this tradition, with some women beginning to address their husbands by their name (this is not to say that the problem has lessened, but only that it can with due effort). Change can only begin with the questioning of tradition, and a refusal to adhere to it when it is exposed to be patriarchal in its construction. Only then can this, and other patriarchal traditions be effectively countered.

(Source: Feminism in India)

Marriage in India doesn't give you a husband, it turns your lover into a full-time son

I wonder why do Indian laws become a joke in itself. If you punish a daughter-in-law on grounds of cruelty while she tries to separate the son from his parents then why is there no law for a son-in-law who separates his wife from her family? Why is there no law for those mothers in law who tried to separate their daughters in law from their sons? We are in 2017 where we let about modesty but the reality still remains the same.

I'm 27 years old. I dated my husband for 5 long years and then stepped into the decision of marriage. Like any other couple we fought and in minutes we'd forget what happened actually and move on to the next step. When we decided to get married my parents supported me through and through.

I belong from a nuclear family but my husband has always lived in a joint family. As a 26-year-old working woman my thoughts were like "one big happy family that stays together, eats together, have fun together. I will get love from all." Every time I would go there I would be treated as a part of them. I was so happy that my future will be a fun ride.

But never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that things will change overnight post marriage.

After marriage I joined my office where things were a little difficult to manage as my travel time increased by 2 hrs . I could not manage with the crowd I was travelling with so I would stand for 2 and a half hours all the way to work and same story while returning. I would reach home by 11 pm with my husband and my mother-in-law would be standing at the door.

I thought she waited for us but no she would only wait for her son. Once he would get into the room she would quite smartly ask me to come inside the kitchen to help her serve the food and when I would enter the kitchen, she would have made nothing and so she'd ask me to cook and I would do it quietly. After food I would go freshen up and when I'd get back, either rotis will be done or sabji will be over, sometimes both and I would have to sleep with a half empty stomach.

I tried it for a month but couldn't take it anymore and hence, kept a maid to cook. My mother-in-law asked her to leave and started demanding for my salary. I was confused about what had happened to her suddenly. She is a teacher herself, earns about 18 to 20k a month from her tuition classes. I'm the only daughter of my retired father, if I didn't help my parents with basic finances, where will they go.

All this kept aside I took my father and mother in law on a trip via flight as it was their dream to board a flight once. Post the trip my mother-in-law started telling me I'm a banjh (a women who cannot have kids) because I asked her for her Gynac's number as I had missed my periods for 2 months and was not pregnant based on the pregnancy test. She took me to her Gynac who gave me medicines that could lead to miscarriage if I was by default pregnant. She did all of this so that her son didn't have to spend money on me and my baby.

Post 5 months of marriage I came to know I was pregnant but at high risk of miscarriage if I kept travelling to work. Hence, I had to quit. The day I did this her torture started. I was not given proper food and medication. I was 85 kgs and I shed down to 69 kgs in just 2 months.

A movie date with my husband would also turn into a family movie plan. She would make my husband sit and gossip with her for hours after dinner. Sat-Sun would turn into a busy schedule because we'd have to take them out for bank work, some relatives' place etc. while the relatives would lock themselves in their room. My husband's granny would stick to her daily TV shows. I would have nothing to do but finish household work, cook for 9 people and sit locked up in my room.

One day my parents gave me a surprise visit. My mom entered the house and asked for me. My mother-in-law lied saying I was taking a bath. My mom knocked on my door and I opened it crying. My parents could sense it that I was falling into depression.

That's how I broke the news to them that I was pregnant. They got me home with them. Today I'm blessed with a baby boy and I'm proud to say that it's only me who is bearing all the expenses of my baby. His father has not shed a single penny on us. He is a weekly visitor to his son.

This surprises me because I didn't know how a lover changes into a full-time son post marriage.

They feel we are their property and come what may we will not go away since they have a marriage stamp on us. It surprises me to know before marriage I was daughter to the same in-laws for whom I have turned into an outsider post marriage. Yes stories like mine still exist in every second house in India

I have asked my husband a couple of times to rent a house so that he doesn't become sandwich between me and his mom. But his mom says, "If she's telling you this, tell her it's a supreme court law that if she tries to separate you from us you have the right to divorce her."

Does Indian law say if you fights with your parents do you leave them? No we don't but it's also true that my parents don't differentiate between daughter and son-in-law, rather they are respected more in our family. It is also true that standing at the door my mother would help me with a glass of water and ask how was your day and would never let me sleep half stomach. A few kind words, a few nice gestures, a good start to the day from a mother-in-law can actually make it easier for the daughter to adjust into a completely new world.

But I was in my dream world when reality broke in and left me shattered. Now I'm trying to collect my broken pieces and give my life a new start.

(Source: Akkar Bakkar)

Rs 50 lakh wasn't enough to save this Kerala bride from alleged dowry harassment

Roshan and his family had demanded and accepted 1 kilogram of gold, an expensive car and land as dowry at the time of the wedding, say the police.

20-year-old Salsha discontinued her graduation because her parents had found what seemed like the perfect match for her. Decked up in layers of gold jewellery, she posed for her wedding photos with a happy smile on her face. So what if the groom's family demanded an exorbitant dowry? That's customary, the family believed.

But barely three months later, Salsha is dead. On July 11, she was found hanging in her husband's house in Venjaranmoodu in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram.

Salsha was allegedly harassed for more dowry by her husband Roshan's family, and unable to bear it anymore, she decided to take her own life, according to the police.

Attingal Additional Superintendent of Police Adithya confirmed to TNM that post mortem reports had established that the death was caused by hanging.

Salsha's parents raised suspicions about their daughter's untimely death and alleged that their daughter wouldn't have ended her life if she hadn't been harassed.

The daughter of a gulf-based businessman Shanawas and his wife Saleena, Salsha had dropped her education midway to get married.

Attingal ASP Adithya told TNM that Roshan and his mother have been booked under Section 304 (b) (dowry death).

Roshan and his family had demanded and accepted 1 kilogram of gold, an expensive car and land as dowry at the time of the wedding, say the police.

While one kilogram of gold roughly costs Rs 30 lakh, Roshan was also gifted an Innova Crysta (a car that costs Rs 15- 20 lakhs). The police confirmed that it was a grand wedding in Attingal and more gifts were given apart from the groom's family's demands.

“It was her brother who first complained about it being an alleged case of dowry death. He gave the police a statement. There were no signs of physical abuse. Her parents have alleged that Roshan and his mother made repeated demands for more dowry,” ASP Adithya told TNM.

Salsha’s husband Roshan, also a Gulf-based business man, went into hiding soon after her death. Roshan surrendered to the police after the Kerala High Court rejected his anticipatory bail plea earlier this week. Police say that his mother continues to abscond.

Though it is unclear what Roshan’s version of the story is, many have raised questions about the practice of giving extravagant gifts during the wedding.

During weddings, wealthy and not-so-wealthy parents of young girls, especially in Kerala, follow the ‘custom’ of ‘giving gifts’ to the groom's family. Wedding expenditure in the state is so high that the State Women’s Commission had mooted a guideline to have a cap on such expenditure.

A demand for levying tax of luxury weddings was made in the Kerala Assembly, but Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan turned it down.

The CM said the only way to check such weddings was to generate awareness. Pinarayi acknowledged that luxury weddings have a lot of socio- economic implications and extravaganza by the rich people badly affects the poor who struggle without money to conduct weddings.

Demanding, giving and taking dowry was banned in India in 1961 through the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, but the menace continues.

Last month, TNM had reported about a case from Tamil Nadu, in which the woman, a chartered accountant, died. Divya had come back to her parents multiple times in four years with fresh demands of dowry made by her in-laws. Her parents kept sending her back to her husband, and the young woman was finally found dead on July 17.

(Source: TNM)

A Karnataka woman helped her daughter-in-law get Rs 4 crore as alimony

She stood by her daughter-in-law, and insisted that her son be made to pay alimony. because he had the money to.

In a rare instance of solidarity - at least going by popular perception - a mother deposed against her son in a court of law, and helped her daughter-in-law get alimony in a divorce case.

A Bengaluru family court ordered late Congress Minister SR Kashappanavar’s son Devanand to pay his 25-year-old ex-wife a permanent alimony of Rs 4.85 crore, while dissolving their marriage.

The Fifth Additional Principal Family Court Judge noted that the petitioner was eligible for divorce as they have been living separately for close to four and a half years.

The petitioner and Devanand (the petitioner's maternal uncle), had married on May 22, 2011 at Hungund taluk of Bagalkot district.

The petitioner told the court that Devanand had married her only to respect the late Minister’s wishes, and had an extra-marital affair.

According to the petition, Devanand stayed at the other woman’s house for the most part. When his wife confronted it, he was allegedly violent towards her and verbally abused her. This was when the petitioner moved the court for a divorce.  

In her petition, she mentioned that she was treated like a stranger by her husband after tying the knot, although he was cordial with her weeks prior to their marriage.

According to the petitioner and her mother-in-law, Devanand had married the other woman illegally against the wishes of the elders of the family and has a child with the woman.

According to The New Indian Express, the mother-in-law, who is also the petitioner’s grandmother, said, “Devanand has vast extent of lands, drives a Mercedes Benz SUV costing more than a crore, owns quarry business and is therefore well off. Without performing his marital obligations, Devanand deserted his wife.”

Devanand did not contest the court notice and failed to appear before the court.

(Source: TNM)

Thanks to Malayalam serials, women are either vamps or needy

Malayali aano? Naatil evideya? 

If you could read and understand the above question, I assume you know a little bit of Malayalam, even if it is korachu-korachu. If you do understand a little Malayalam, someone in the family has to be a true-blue Keralite. Maybe your amma, or your appa, or it could be your ammachi or appachan. If it's either of the above-mentioned blood ties, every day from 7-9 there's got to be a Malayalam serial-spree going on in your house. Because hey, my folks love their serials!

No matter how illogical, senseless, ridiculous, daft or completely distorted the story line might be, she'll still be at her spot, in front of the TV, sharp at 7. In Karuthumuthu (The black pearl), a man marries a dark-skinned girl, because, "She's so kaali, who'll marry her? " In Chandanamazha, (Sandal Rain) a man marries an orphaned, illiterate woman. Everyone in the house likes her, except her husband, and her cousin is always out to make her look like a fool.

A mother that controls her son, an ex who wants to get back with the man and kill the current girlfriend/wife, and a sister who will kill before she sees another woman take control of the house. Unfortunately, Malayalam serials are losing the plot nowadays and are full of female characters who're either vamps, a nobody or a needy person. Basically, all the stereotypes that we've been trying to break free of.

Highlighting this problem through illustrations and a lot of sassy dialgoues is Sudha Pillai, columnist and writer with NaGeo Traveller, photographer, artist and founder of A Sunny Square, an online space for happy stories. All of her illustrations are a dig at the regressive things men and women say in life and of course, everything we've been shown in our entertainment industry.

The eternal confusion. 

The wife who thinks her love is what keeps her husband alive.  

Oh! How can we forget this? The magic ingredient that makes every marriage work. 

An idea a lot of people will agree with.  

Kis kis ko pyaar karun? 

The generous doctor who marries a kaali girl for the greater good. 

The over-protective, overbearing, over-everything mother. 

(Source: Scoop Whoop)

They tortured her, we kept sending her back: Family distraught after CA killed over dowry

The police say that Divya’s father-in-law has confessed to murdering her, because he wanted his son to marry again for more dowry.

When Divya met Elan Cheran for the first time four years ago, in the presence of both their families, she and her family were elated with the match. They didn’t know then that four years later, the young chartered accountant would be tortured and murdered, all in the name of dowry.

Back in 2013, the then 22-year-old was told by Elan Cheran’s parents that all they wanted was her, as a daughter-in-law. In that first meeting, dowry was laughed off, and Divya’s family was excited about the upcoming wedding - especially since Elan Cheran was a doctor.

But as the wedding date neared, things started changing dramatically. Elan Cheran’s family started making demands, and though they were a little taken aback, Divya’s family agreed to give them what they wanted, for the sake of their daughter’s future.

They gave Elan Cheran’s family 100 sovereigns of gold, Rs 15 lakh for a car, Rs 30 lakh cash and 5 kg of silver as dowry, Divya’s brother Prekumar says. “But Elan Cheran’s mother was not happy with it,” he adds.

“The day after the wedding, she took all the gold from Divya and started fighting with her, claiming that we had given two sovereigns of gold less than we promised. She called us, and I immediately went and bought two sovereigns of gold,” Premkumar recalled.

But even that wasn’t enough for the doctor’s parents; after allegedly torturing her for dowry over the years, Elan Cheran’s family allegedly murdered their 25-year-old daughter-in-law on July 17.

Divya with her husband and in-laws

Multiple demands for dowry
All things considered, Divya’s family should perhaps have seen this coming. In the last four years, she has come back home crying at least twenty times, says Premkumar.

“We have given them money multiple times in the last four years… Once, we gave Rs 4 lakh, once it was Rs 3 lakh, once it was Rs 50,000. In total, we have given them around Rs 15 to 20 lakh over the years,” Premkumar says.

“Ten days ago, she came back home, saying her in-laws had now demanded Rs 10 lakh. We sent her back, saying we will try to arrange the money, but we didn’t know they would kill her for this,” the distraught brother says.

Father-in-law’s confession
On July 17, Divya’s father-law and two other men, Shivakumar and Senthil, hit her and allegedly suffocated her to death using a pillow.

“Around 10.30pm that night, her mother-in-law called me and asked me to come to their house, saying that Divya is unwell. By the time, I reached their home, they had taken her to a government hospital. When I reached the hospital, I realised she was murdered by her in-laws,” Premkumar recalls.

“She had marks all over her face,” he adds.

The next day, Divya’s brother filed a complaint with the Mannargudi town police station.

“During the investigation, we found out that three men, including her father-in-law, had murdered her,” a senior police officer from Mannargudi tells TNM.

“The father-in-law told us during the interrogation that he and his wife wanted to get their son married to another woman, to get more dowry. So, they decided to kill her,” inspector of Mannargudi town police station says.

Asked about the husband’s role in the case, police say he was not involved in murder, but he has been charged for dowry harassment.

The police have arrested five people in the case, including Divya’s husband Elan Cheran, his parents, and two other men - Shivakumar and Senthil. All five accused have been remanded to Tiruchi central prison, and a case has been filed under Section 498A (Husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and Section 302 (Punishment for murder) under Indian Penal Code.

The signs of things to come
“Earlier, Divya’s family had gone to panchayat with this issue, and both the families had reached a compromise,” the police inspector tells TNM.

Today, Premkumar feels guilty for shouting at his sister many times, asking her to go back to her in-laws’ house. Divya’s family - like many others in a similar situation - had held ‘family’ and ‘reconciliation’ over their daughter’s safety.

“About a year ago, her mother-in-law had fought with her saying that she did not do household chores properly, and her father-in-law hit her for that. She was scared to go back home, yet, we told her to go back,” Premkumar rues.

“She had a three-year-old child, and she had to take care of him…” he says, perhaps in an attempt to console himself.

“I thought, slowly, everything will be fine,” he says, offering a refrain that many families give, as they try to come to terms with domestic violence.

(Source: TNM)

I'm a Spanish immigrant in America with a broken heart who dared to marry an Indian man

I met a wonderful smart caring man. An Indian man while we were international students in America. I am Spanish, I love your culture, your people, I really do!

We married, had children, and then got divorced. To this date I feel terrible for having left him, for breaking the family and for not being able to offer my children a united stable home.

The truth is, I could not deal with two things. First, the gender inequality in the relationship. He was so smart that he was always right or his decision was the final one! I too was working but I couldn’t choose the furniture or even a cushion in the house without his approval.

Second, I couldn’t deal with the politics of the very dominating and controlling women in his life. The mother and the sister!

Our little family was not independent. I was seen as an addition to his family, rather than the partner of a new little family. My opinion did not matter.

It was his mother who did all the planning of our real estate investment against my will and in her name. It was those women who were telling my husband that we shouldn’t buy a bigger house even if we could afford it. But it was perfectly fine for his sister to have bigger more expensive houses! I still remember his sister calling him 3 times a day every day to coordinate his mom’s visits/vacations with him and sending the mother to our house for 3-4 months in a year.

She would then impose herself on us by being loud. She would be on the phone all the time speaking in a dialect that I couldn’t understand even though she speaks English.

She was always giving me the attitude that I was too lucky for marrying her son and that I wasn’t a good wife for not cooking Indian food or for not calling her “Mummy!”

Today, I am an educated, professional single mom struggling to find good employment. I am paying my mortgage, taking care of the kids and living far away from my own family/parents.

I am heartbroken for “being the bad of the story!” For leaving a bright man because I couldn’t take the way they (him and his family) made me feel.

I am lonely. I am scared. I wonder if I will ever have a beautiful family or if I will ever find someone who respects and loves me and my kid(s). Both, staying or leaving him were difficult choices. I left him out of respect for my dignity and here I am struggling alone.

- A Spanish immigrant in America with a broken heart.

(Source: AkkarBakkar)

I decided to divorce my in-laws, and I’ve never looked back since

Piya De Bose, a single mother and a HR professional who lives in Bangalore, shares her pain on The Ladies Finger, which reminds me of my sister-in-law who struggled with in-laws and family and at last got her freedom from their clutches. Today, she's a successful working woman and both dad and mom to her so. Kudos to such brave ladies:

This was the day the final shards of rose-tinted glasses fell off.

I was standing mute in front of a judge while my lawyer articulated why the interim custody of my 5-year-old son should stay with me till the divorce has been finalised. My child was shivering while clutching my hand, not comprehending why he was out on a school day. The previous day, I had walked out of my marital home with my son and just the clothes on our backs. Now, in court, I felt foolish for not having taken his jacket. But then, I may have never escaped. I may have been stopped and I may have lost my child forever.

My in-laws warned me that I could either quit my job or leave, but without my child. After all, my son was their only grandchild. That I was his sole provider and his father was an alcoholic living with another woman in a different city, didn’t matter to them. I was asked to keep up the semblance of a functioning marriage and be the obedient daughter-in-law in exchange for the social recognition and identity of a married woman with good character. It was only a few months after I moved in with my in-laws that I was allowed to work. That was when the school fees and expenses multiplied and I had to pay them for our upkeep. This last part was only fair, since their son never sent them money.

We didn’t always live with my in-laws. But they always knew of his alcoholic rage and chose to look the other way. He broke things during his fits, came home drunk only to hurl abuses and blame me for his situation and often force sex on me. All of this would happen even when my in-laws were visiting us. The next morning, they ignored my swollen eyes and loss of appetite and went on as if nothing has happened. He did not hit you, was what my mother-law would say. There were days I had to borrow money from a neighbour to buy baby food because he drank away the money and we were living from one paycheck to the next. My father had to clear the bill on my credit card (which he used without ever repaying) when I finally decided to cancel it.

Several such incidents later, as a compromise, my in-laws asked me to move to their town and live with them while my husband stayed behind because of his new job. Little did I realise that moving in with them would bring on other forms of abuse. I was not allowed to visit my parents often, though they lived in the same town. When my mother called, my mother-in-law would complain about how bad my house-keeping skills were and that I was neglecting the child because I was studying for a professional diploma when he slept at night. I was criticised if I came an hour late from work, or if my cooking was not up to the mark or if I listened to music. They frowned if I bought a book or a gift for a friend. I had to show them everything I bought because my money was the family money and it was considered indecent to indulge in any way. They sulked when I refused to make my salary account into a joint account. My mother-in-law kept all my jewellery with her and I needed her permission to use them.

Initially, I told myself that that their constant criticism was routine. A new bride, is expected to adjust to new rules, isn’t she? However, all the rules applied to me and none to their son. I should have seen this coming. A day after our wedding, he left for hours to get drunk in a bar, leaving hundreds of guests who were waiting at our reception to wish us good luck. His parents hushed it up blaming their relative who had gone with him. Ours was an arranged marriage and I was naïve enough to miss all the red flags.

A few months into the marriage, when reality struck hard it caught me completely off-guard.  The daily binge drinking and missing work regularly, cost him his job. My in-laws sent some money so that we could tide over till he found a job, but also used the opportunity to tell me how they had almost finalised another match for their son, a girl who was working in a multi-national and earning a handsome salary.

By the time my son was four, I was already living with my in-laws for two years, earning our keep. Then, a well-wisher informed me of my husband’s affairs. On confronting him, he accepted that it was true. He was so casual about it that it shocked me. When I told my in-laws, they advised me to ignore it because I was not skilled enough to keep my man happy. A wife plays several roles, said my father-in-law. When the need arises, she should be as skilful as a prostitute to not let the husband stray. They told not to discuss this matter with anyone and that I should continue living with them as the daughter-in-law and someday when he gets tired of these other women, he will come home and take care of us. Meanwhile, all the slights and insults were so de rigueur that I learnt to ignore them.

Instead, the daily drama motivated me to do better at work — the only place where I was appreciated, and had some self-esteem left. Unfortunately, it began to shame my in-laws that I was doing better than their son. When I was invited to speak to a small gathering, my mother-in-law warned me to never to do it again — apparently, I was making myself available to the men.

Early on, I had the solace that my in-laws took care of my child for the few hours that I was at work. However, that didn’t last. My son spent every afternoon watching tv serials about sacrificing wives, polygamist husbands and family politics. My in-laws taught my four-year-old that boys were superior, and that they would never accept it if he married someone from another religion. They told me that I had no right to intervene in his upbringing because I was a bad influence on him.

One day my in-laws overheard me sobbing over the phone while I was talking to a work friend. Immediately, they began pressuring me to quit my job. They manipulated my son to throw tantrums every day — if you love me you will not go to work. With that, I had enough. I decided to leave.

There was a new beginning in the cold courtroom. The divorce case dragged on for over three years mostly because he did not appear and his lawyer kept asking for extensions. As my luck would have it, the neighbour who had told me of my husband’s affair refused to come down to testify in court, fearing his reputation. His relatives and friends, who knew of his nature and his affairs, expressed sympathy in private but were unwilling to come forward in my support. After 10 years of living in an abusive marriage, which chipped away at my self-confidence and worth, I had no proof to show. The million little things that broke my spirit over the years were too flimsy for the court. At every point, I was asked — why did you accept that. You are educated and well-spoken. So, if you accepted that, it means you consented to it. The elderly court-appointed mediator asked me several times why I was not willing to go back and live with my in-laws and try again. At times, the wife has to compromise more, she told me. When I told her of the instances, the years of compromise, his indiscretions, she said being a mother you need to think of your son’s future first. I realised that unless I am able to prove any of the misdeeds it was pointless to fight. Camera phones had not arrived yet and telephone conversations could not be recorded easily.

For that entire time, I never stopped looking over my shoulders every time I stepped out of home. My ageing parents jumped every time the doorbell rang. I asked for permission from work to escort my son to and fro school for that entire school year till I could change his school to one nearer home. The threat was real. My husband had several nefarious acquaintances and when I had left his parents’ house, he had warned me of dire consequences because they had lost face and people were asking them why I left so suddenly. He threatened to kidnap our son and get me killed. I believed him and lived in fear until the day I met him for the final divorce decree, which we both had to sign. That decree became possible only after I agreed to claim nothing, not even child support. Every now and then, I still see photos of my mother-in-law on someone’s page, wearing my sarees — sarees that my mother had saved over many years for my wedding trousseau. In a divorce, women lose more than just their self-esteem. I lost my grandmother’s gold bangles, her last gift to me before she died. I lost my prized collection of books. I heard they sold the books as soon as I left. After several legal notices, I was able to get some of my jewellery back. My lawyer on her part apologised profusely for her inability to get me a fair mandate and refused to take her fees. By then, wrung out emotionally and financially, I was only looking for freedom from him and his family.

Cold winds had blown through every aspect of my life. His parents spread lies and told everyone how bad a wife and a mother I was since I was of ‘loose character’. I wonder if anyone asked them why they allowed me to stay with them if I was having so many affairs while living in their home. Hard to say which stories upset my parents more — them bad-mouthing me, my parents or my younger brother who had passed away a few years earlier.

On the other hand, some folks also told my father to retaliate and that they knew my in-laws were crooks and my father in-law was a prime accused in a case of financial fraud.

So I got my divorce and that was the end. Not quite.

Being a single mother means it never quite ends. When I was renewing my passport, I was questioned why I wanted to keep my husband’s last name when I was divorced. During my son’s board exam, the registering official insisted that we fill out his father’s address and other current details even after I explained that we were unaware of his whereabouts. My financials are a mess because though my son is a nominee for all my transactions, he needs a legal guardian in my absence and both my parents are too ill to be eligible. I was refused a housing loan a few years ago because I did not have a co-applicant.

Whether it’s a hotel booking or a phone bill, the salutation is always a ‘Mrs’ by default. Whenever I meet someone new here, whether at work or outside, the first or the second question is always about the husband. When I say, I am divorced, it invites either suspicion or curiosity guised as sympathy.

It has been many years since I walked out of a life filled with self-doubt and misery. My friends often ask me why I didn’t leave earlier. I was brought up to believe marriages are for a lifetime. I didn’t know enough to recognise abuse when someone wasn’t harming me physically. After some time, I accepted it without any fight and believed it was my fault and that I was not worthy of anything good. I foolishly believed that leaving my husband would not only harm me but also our son.

It was much later, that I realised the sense of fear and foreboding that I constantly felt was a result of the continuous psychological abuse. To this date, I have trust issues that I am yet to overcome. I would startle easily when someone called my name fearing more criticism. It felt like walking on eggshells all the time. For years, I had to ask my mother-in-law which dress or saree to wear when we went out together. Things would go missing from my room and wardrobe but I did not have the courage to ask her about them. Weeks would pass before I would speak with my mother properly. I would leave the phone after a cursory ‘I am doing ok’ or ‘I have reached home from office’, which puzzled them. I could not sleep at night and whenever I slept, I dreamt of drowning or someone squeezing my neck and I would wake up in sweat. I would get obsessed with cleanliness and would wash hands unnecessarily till my skin started chaffing. I developed anxiety about everything. Several time during those spiteful years, I had contemplated suicide and I made meticulous plans in my head to execute it. Only the thought of my young son stopped me. But the most dangerous were the lies I told people that led them to believe I had a wonderfully supporting family. My make-belief life was a parallel movie in my head that I lived every day. That’s how I coped.

Today I am free. I am a responsible mother, sole caregiver for my parents and an active citizen. I learnt to manage my finances, file my taxes, run a household, hold my own in a conversation, travel alone. For me, the biggest reassurance that I did the right thing by walking away and choosing not to hate, is when I see my son as a sensible, responsible, empathetic young person who reflect the values I hold dear.

Those years has also taught me to be watchful of the signs. Recently, I noticed a young colleague was taking too many sick leaves. A little empathy and she opened up. Her husband and mother-in-law beat her regularly for dowry and controlled her every action. After a lot of counselling from professionals, she was confident enough to walk out and report them.

We have to watch out for each other.

Dear mother-in-law, I'll never get over what you said to me: We're done and I'm not sorry

Dear Mother-in-law,
I married your son and moved into your house. Life seems manageable even though there were hiccups here and there. Thanks to your son because he has been my pillar of strength no matter what.

Like every other family, my own family was hit with a disastrous crisis. My own elder brother fell into bad company and stole my mother’s gold and cash to invest in an illegal product. That news shocked our entire family. I still remember how my mother called me every single day, her eye balls out telling me how lost she and dad were. I want to be there for my mother and father through this tough time. I told you.

I asked for your permission before stepping out of that house to accompany my parents for a few days. After all, I’m their daughter. For the past 24 years that was my house. From the way you nodded, I knew you didn't want to let me go to my house.

Even my mother called and explained my family situation. You responded with self pride saying I must come back as soon as possible. Who gave you the permission to put forward such a demand in front of my mother? To send her own daughter back when you wanted?

You are just my husband's mother. And grandmother for my future children. That’s all and that’s it. You don’t have any right to order my family around.

But still my parents kept quite. Because they don’t want their 'newlywed precious daughter’s life' to be ruined. When I was at my parents' house, you called me and asked me when I was coming back. I answered politely saying, in 2 days. You started your tantrums. I listened to every single word you said about my brother and his wrong deed. I never fought back. I respected you.

More than the respect I have for you, I love your son. I don’t want the quarrel between you and I to affect him. That’s when you said those words.

You questioned my ability to conceive even though it’s been just one year of marriage. I was so shocked with your question. To my horror, you said that my entire family should have some sort of condition that caused my delay in pregnancy. I hung up the call. Our conversation ended there.

My father accompanied me to send me back to your house after a few weeks. As courtesy, my father explained our family situation to you. You cut him off by saying, "It’s none of your business." Apart from that, you said many other hurtful things.

I still cannot brush off the image of my father staring blankly on the floor while you spoke out loud arrogantly.

After that incident, I visited fertility centres as part of my monthly routine. The doctors kept advising me by saying, I’m perfectly fine. So does your son, who doesn’t have any idea on why I’m suddenly obsessed with pregnancy. I took tons of fertility pills. I read hundreds of fertility articles. Every single morning, I woke with so much anger and agony. Anger, because I can’t prove you wrong till now. Agony, because waiting for any sign of miracle for me and there is none.

Various single lined pregnancy tests piled up inside our room. For three months, I was not myself. You turned my life upside down. That's when I poured my feelings out in front of your son. I know he was ashamed of your statement. He consoled me. Every single word he said nourished me. I felt empty after sharing my agony with him. His warm hug put my broken pieces together and now I’m shining like a new penny.

Here’s for you ma (mother-in-law),

I loved and married your son, greatest guy I have come across. I still respect you as my husband’s mother. Nothing more than that. Conceiving a baby, planning my pregnancy and raising them is the decision that your son and I will have to make. Not you. I have very big dreams and ambitions that I wish to achieve before stepping into the next stage of life.

I’m continuing my further studies. Thank God, your son doesn’t follow your blames blindly. I'm still thankful to my husband for encouraging me to go after my dreams. He never pestered or questioned my pregnancy like you did and we still enjoy each other’s company.

Without his support and encouragement, I’m nothing. Coming to you and me, we're done.

Sincerely,
Your ambitious daughter-in-law.

(Source: AkkarBakkar)

In this part of India, women are routinely prostituted by their in-laws

On a recent sunny day before the monsoons began, a thin woman settled to the floor in the cool shade of a nondescript apartment building in Dharampura, where a Perna community lives on the outskirts of Delhi. Rani is not normally awake in the afternoon; the Perna practice a form of inter-generational sex work, which is a strangely polite way of saying that women here expect to be prostituted by their husbands.

Rani’s daily routine rarely changes: she “goes for prostitution” around 2:00 a.m., taking an auto-rickshaw with other Perna women to public places. “Anywhere that’s crowded is good,” she says.

“Bus stations, taxis.” In nearby Delhi, women with the means to do so make their plans for the evening early and don’t leave the house without a male escort after dark. Rani, who goes out every night on her own, says she dreads the moment when the group of women inevitably separates: “You have to do the work alone.”

She tries to avoid the police. Rather than providing her protection, they ask for free sex and take her money. On good nights she might service as many as five customers, bad nights are the ones when she can’t find a john. She comes home around 7:00 a.m., makes her six children and her husband breakfast, washes clothes, takes a nap, cooks dinner, sometimes steals another few hours of sleep, and then gets up to start the day all over again. She met her husband on the day of her wedding, becoming his second wife at the age of 17, and two years later, his prostitute.

“I knew it would happen, it’s very normal,” she said. “I do it to earn for my family.”

“If rape happens in Delhi, everyone gets excited,” said Abhilasha Kumari, director of Apne Aap Worldwide. “But these women are raped every day,” she says of the country’s prostitutes.

Dr. Aparajita Gogoi, founder of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood/India, explained that women in India have historically not had the same status as men. “There’s a saying here that you’re lucky if your wife dies and not your cow,” Gogoi said.

In a culture where sons provide for their parents and daughters provide for their in-laws, Indian families traditionally invested in their male progeny the way Western families invest in a 401K. It’s just simple economics. In marginalized communities like the Perna, a formerly nomadic tribe stigmatized in the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, women’s lives tend to be worth even less; there’s a very human need, even or perhaps especially within minorities, to be the oppressor rather than the oppressed.

“It happens to every girl,” says Horbai, another Perna woman. “You get used to it.” Horbai was studying to be a tailor until her parents died, and her aunt and uncle married her to a stranger. She returned to Dharampura as a young widow, and with no other form of income, joined the other women as a prostitute.

But Horbai has a surprisingly positive take. “My life before [my marriage] was very difficult,” she said. “My life after was very difficult. But coming on my own now, I’m happy, because I’m able to give my daughters an education.”

This is the state of gender affairs in Dharampura today: Horbai is happy that her pimp outlasted her husband. “Maybe if my husband was alive, my daughters would be restricted,” Horbai said. On her own, she’s able to support her family and send her children to school. “So I’m happy for them, but not myself.”

Horbai’s 12-year-old daughter wants to be a journalist, and she watches shyly from the corner as our interview takes place. Her 10-year-old sister is not at all shy; she wants to be an actress, and vamps happily in front of my Nikon. “I would never let my daughters go into sex work,” Horbai said.

“That’s why I want them to be educated.” Horbai’s daughters are lucky. They are taking classes with a non-profit advocacy organization, Apne Aap, that works with the Perna and other communities where sex work is common, trying to provide the children of prostitutes alternative skills.

Many of the women here are emphatic that they would never let their daughters go into sex work. In fact, this is often the giveaway of their true feelings about their profession. Scared of stirring up trouble with their husbands, the women have learned to say that the sex is “with their consent.”

But everyone I talked to during my stay was adamant that they don’t want their daughters to follow in their stead. Unfortunately, the women have little control over what will happen after their daughters are married, traditionally at very young ages. Unless the girls have another way to earn money for their new families, they will likely follow a now well-worn path.

It was the drastic lack of options in the lives of prostitutes that led Rukshira Gupta to found Apne Aap. “Women in India are in danger from the time they are conceived until the time they die,” Gupta said. “They could be victims of sex-selective abortion, if they are born they may be left out to die, if they survive they’ll get less food than their brothers, be pulled out of school to help with chores at home, be married early, risk death during pregnancy, be sold into prostitution, or die begging as widows.”

Gupta has short spiky hair and, once she gets on a roll, can hold forth at great length on gender issues in India. She has all the passion of an accidental advocate, falling into the role during the course of researching a story in Nepal as a journalist. “I came into rows of villages that didn’t have any, I mean any, girls, from 15 to 45,” she said. “I asked some of the men sitting around and they were sheepish, and then finally someone told me, ‘Don’t you know? They’re all in Bombay.’”

This was in a village two hours from a road, Gupta said, but there was a whole supply chain in place. Families would be paid for their daughters, sometimes as little as $50, and the girls taken by a series of transporters across the border to agents in Calcutta and Bombay, where they were handed over to pimps and priced based on their beauty and age. The pimps gave them to brothel managers for “seasoning” — repeated rape — and the girls, many between nine and 13 years old, were then kept in bonded labor, expected to service 10 or more customers a night for an average of $3 each.

“You’re told you’re devalued because you’ve been used sexually, so you can’t go home,” Gupta said. The brothel owners, who are one part of a broad network of organized crime, “condition the girls’ minds as well as use physical restraint.” The documentary she made of life in these red light districts won an Emmy, but she quit journalism the night she received the award. “As a journalist, I’d covered war, but I’d never seen this kind of exploitation of one human by another,” Gupta said.

Since 1997, Gupta’s organization, Apne Aap — which means “self-empowerment” in Hindi — has worked with prostitutes across India, including denotified tribes like the Perna, helping the women to set up micro-finance groups, trying to get their children enrolled in schools, and lobbying for government policies that protect their rights.

Abhilasha Kumari, director of Apne Aap Worldwide, explained that after what has become known as the “Delhi Incident” — last December, a 23-year-old coming home from a movie with a male companion was beaten and brutally gang-raped on a bus, later dying from her injuries — there’s been a rare burst of attention to women’s rights. “If rape happens in Delhi, everyone gets excited,” Kumari said. “But these women are raped every day,” she says of the country’s prostitutes.

Kumari was among the organizers at Apne Aap who took 200 prostitutes to one of the many protests following the Delhi Incident. “They were shouting slogans, clapping,” Kumari said. “For the first time, they felt like they mattered, like they could make a difference.” Someone was finally paying attention.

Manita, one of the inter-generational prostitutes from Dharampura, attended the rally, her first act of protest. “Rape was always happening,” she said. “Now it’s just the media is paying attention. But what’s the point of being aware of what’s happening unless there’s strict laws?” She attended the demonstration to demand that India’s laws regarding rape and sexual exploitation be changed. “Someone must have heard my voice as well,” she said.

Even though gender-based violence is finally in the spotlight, Kumari explains that as feminism gains a new cache in India, it’s important to keep the cultural context in mind. “People from socially liberal places need to understand that prostitution is not a moral issue,” Kumari said. “The gay movement is equating its own sexual freedom with women’s freedom to be prostitutes, and what they don’t understand is that these women aren’t articulating their sexuality, they’re being bought and sold.”

The common argument made in countries like Norway, where the novel policy question is not whether to punish traffickers of underage children but whether to make adult prostitution legal, is that women should have a right to make a living however they please. “But if you are forced into sex work when you’re 10 years old and then told you can’t leave, exactly what choice are you exercising?” Kumari asked.

Caveats aside, Kumari’s cautiously optimistic that women’s rights might be slowly changing in India. “Momentarily, there’s excitement,” she said. But she cautioned that hope was too strong a word. “Hope is too reality driven, and it takes time to make change.”

After the gang-rape in December, India passed the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, which more clearly defines rape; increases the possible sentencing for sexual violence to include the death penalty; and makes stalking, sexual harassment, and “eve-teasing” illegal. But in Delhi, a rape is reported every 18 hours, suggesting the actual number of rapes is even higher.

At the end of April, the city saw another popular outcry as demonstrations renewed to protest the recent kidnapping, rape, and torture of a five-year-old girl. When the girl’s parents reported the crime, the police offered the family 2,000 rupees — about $37 — if they would drop the case. A few days later, a mustachioed police officer hit a female demonstrator across the face, sparking India’s version of the uproar over Anthony Bologna.

Rashida Manjoo, special rapporteur for the United Nations on violence against women, recently came out with a statement lamenting the Criminal Law, saying it does “not go far enough,” failing to “establish a substantive and specific equality and non-discrimination rights legislative framework for women.” After meeting with government figures and civil society around Delhi, Manjoo believes this “stems from a government’s inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge and address the core structural causes of violence against women.” In non-U.N. speak, it’s not enough just have a new law on the books — both law enforcement and the judicial system need to enforce it.

Back in Dharampura, Rani squinted as the sun dropped into the window, suddenly flooding the dark room. “No one wants to do this work,” she said quietly. “It’s always without choice. But who would I go to complain to?” All she wants for the future, she says, is for her daughter to be someone society recognizes.

On my flight leaving India, a small column in the complimentary in-flight newspaper gave an inch of space to a four-year-old rape victim from Madhya Pradesh. She died after a week in a coma on life support. No one was protesting for her.

(Source: Pacific Standard)

I chose my in-laws over my parents and it's the biggest regret of my life

We shed out our love, more often that not, for people who don’t deserve it. Read the story of a woman who is accepting her mistake of choosing her in-laws over her parents on AkkarBakkar:

Sometimes when I look back at my life, I wonder where did I lose my way. Happy; the one word that described me. I laughed uncontrollably, giggled like a baby, adored dolls, and couldn’t stop loving each second of my life. I just knew I was born to be happy.

On weekends, my father would take my brother and I for some fun activity. We would go to the beach for a swim or play football together. Almost all weekends saw guests and we all surely loved it. We’d sit in our drawing room, sipping on chai, while dad narrated stories from his childhood and read up poems and couplets from his favorite books.

To bring this part of my life back I will probably have to to write a book. Because happiness knows no bounds. It multiplies when shared. But then I turned 21. I was to get married. To my boyfriend. My parents had no objections. We were lucky.

It was going to be a whole new beginning. I was going to have another mom. An older brother. His wife would be my new best friend. And their kids would be living dolls for me. Indeed, I was happy again. I was born to be happy wasn’t I? No.

I wasn’t born in that house. So I was not supposed to be happy there. I was an intruder. And treated like one. But I was supposed to create a bond with them all. I was supposed to make place for myself. No one else was given that responsibility.

I was supposed to eat what was cooked in their house and relish it. I didn’t perform rituals in the temple. Or fast. They said I had no sanskar. I didn’t understand spirituality. They said I had no sanskar. I spoke to all male and female cousins and relatives freely without any hesitation. They said I was not taught well. I remember once I read the newspaper and said how sad that a girl was raped. All eyes rolled, mouths were left open because I said the taboo word — rape.

I told the maid to take care of the house while I went for my delivery and I was looked at as if I was an idiot. I think, I am not sure, but from my experience of getting into their heads to understand their reasoning — it meant I was asking the maid to take care of my husband's ‘important needs’.

Normal people don’t interpret things that way. I swear, we’re not normal people. Because normal people don’t go around destroying other people's lives. They lift them up. At every step I had to be a good daughter-in-law. And cease to be a daughter.

I reached a stage where I wanted to completely cut off my parents and brother from my life. I avoided them. I prayed to God that they didn’t drop by at my place. I hoped with all my heart that they didn’t send my favorite food items. Or new dresses. I started to believe I was supposed to be a good daughter-in-law and that meant I had to stop being a good daughter.

But, I want to thank my parents and my brother for being so stubborn. For never letting me drift away. For holding on to me. For reminding me of my hopes and dreams. Finally, after 13 years of marriage and one lovely son, I took up my dream job. A travel job.

I lost my father in these years and how I wish I had chosen to be a good daughter instead because even when I was not good enough, I was their world. I am still married to the same man. I still have the same set of in-laws. But I have changed. I am happy again.

Sometimes a weird thought crosses my mind and I want to know if it is true. I feel may be I never got respect from my in-laws because I was so stupid that I chose them over my parents. That's when I feel like I deserved all that pain, for hurting the family I was born with.

I am now trying to undo the mistakes I have made in the past and I'm loving my real family like never before.

Marital inequality: “Tradition” and the subjugation of women

Of all the questions, personal and social, with which I have grappled in my life, there is one that evinces the most visceral and dismissive scoff from a lot of people – conservatives and progressives alike.

I first asked it when I was too young to comprehend the response I got. Or so I have been told.

It was the first time I had watched the video of my parents’ wedding, heard the song – “babul ki duaen leti ja” (Dear Daughter, Take the blessings of your Father) play towards the end and seen my mom being escorted out of her maternal home by my grandfather and grandmother into the flower laden Fiat of my dad’s family. My natural impulse was to ask – “Why did you leave your home? Everyone is crying. They clearly don’t want you to” as my mom’s was to answer – “Because after marriage, women have to go live with their husband’s family.”

“But why?” I asked then and have been asking ever since.

Planning Weddings or Internalizing Subjugation?
This phenomenon of sending the daughter away to her “new home” is something we are all too familiar with, even in the 21st century. No questions are asked. No assumptions are challenged. There is no discussion. Apparently, it is the way it is.

Why should my father and my family have to pay for the wedding? Why does the groom’s family get to impose their demands of dowry, expensive venues, gifts and the like on my family? Why are we, the women, the only ones required to leave our current living situations – our homes, our families, our livelihoods, our identities, even our names, in the name of matrimony?

One spends a lifetime in this maze of social norms called “our culture”, and internalizes its subjugation so well that it becomes a part of our identities and belief system, hardly ever questioning the premise of relevance of age-old rituals in today’s day.

Upholding “Tradition” or Stifling Debate?
I will be the first to admit that I am far from being a bystander in this debate. More so, it is hard to do so when you realize that eventually you are headed toward the same fate unless you are prepared to be ostracized from the society. Just mentioning the concept of “nuclear family” out loud can get you labelled as willful and “westernized” and disqualifies you as a good matrimonial match.

The harsh reality is that marriage in the context of Indian culture and society, is NOT a celebration of two people pledging their lives and welfares to each other on equal grounds. It has never been. I don’t need to cite thousands of studies and articles in support of my statement. The empirical evidence pervades our lives.

Heck, just watch a Bollywood movie, any movie, that has a wedding woven into its plot (there should be no dearth of those) and you will see clichés rife with gender inequality. The bride’s father laying his turban at the feet of the groom’s family symbolizing his supposed inferior status, the bride’s family borrowing and/or going broke with the wedding/dowry expenses, the bride wailing her heart out during the send-off ceremony, the bride requiring the “permission” of her in-laws and her husband to visit her own parents after the wedding. Again, I could go on. But it has already started to make my blood boil.

Now what’s interesting to me personally, is that we, as Indians, are so blatant about this inequality that we refuse to define it as such. We would rather bring out the big guns – the proverbial trifecta – Culture, Tradition and Religion, to justify the senselessness of this archaic practice than admit to its uselessness in the present day and age. In most cases, the debate is shut down even before it begins.

The Individual and Institutional Defenders of Misogyny
“What’s the alternative?” Some ask belligerently. “That a man should leave his home to live with his wife’s family?” Because apparently, nothing hurts a man’s ego more than being a ghar jamaayi.

Others reject the notion of nuclear family units as selfish and immoral. “Who is supposed to take care of ageing parents?” They demand with the self-serving ferocity that is so characteristic of patriarchs and misogynists. And the sad part is that the institutions of our country support them whole-heartedly.

The Supreme Court of India, the pinnacle of justice system in our country which is supposed to uphold the rights of ALL its citizens, and not just men, in a long history of clamping down on the rights of its female citizenry, recently granted divorce to a man on the grounds of his wife refusing to live with her in-laws.

In an article published by The Guardian, the freelance journalist, Vidhi Joshi, reports the language employed by Justice Anil R. Dave in his ruling. Justice Dave could have been repeating a dialogue straight out of a Bollywood movie when he argued: “In normal circumstances, a wife is expected to be with the family of the husband after the marriage.”

This Judge of a supposedly “secular” and “democratic” country cited the “pious obligation” that Hindu men have to look after their parents. One could not have expected anything else from this Andha Kanoon, which refuses to criminalize other heinous crimes committed against women within their homes. Marital rape is still legal in India because apparently our society asserts that a wife’s body is her husband’s property. The patriarchs like the honorable Mr. Dave would rather subjugate half their country’s population in the name of cultural norms, archaic practices and religious scriptures, rather than open their eyes to the stark reality of the status of women in the Indian society.

India’s Eligible Yet Invisible Workforce
Some critics are happy to quote the education and employment statistics to score a point in this non-debate. They will assert that it is not a man’s fault; that less women are in the workforce and most households depend on the income of a man. So, naturally, women have to follow wherever the man goes, not vice versa. But even this, does not make any sense.

The 2014 Gender Gap Index report published by World Economic Forum, clearly shows that for every 100 men enrolled in secondary education, there are 79 women enrolled as well. But, due to the deep gender bias entrenched in our society, female labor force participation is abysmal when compared to those of men. The ratio stands at 0.36 – quite appalling for “the fastest growing economy of the world.” Clearly, it’s not that women are not qualified for employment. But a huge majority either don’t get to join the workforce or have to leave it after marriage.

I am not so biased as to lay the blame squarely at the feet of men. Of course, that’s how patriarchal conditioning works. Most women, till today, have come to internalise that financial independence is not as important as marriage. And thus, the oppressed partakes in her oppression, meaning a complete win-win for the oppressive system to continue. This is far from shaming women who choose the home and the hearth over their work life, but this is about the ridiculous idea that the former is every woman’s work, while the latter is unimportant. And mind you, this is a worldwide phenomenon where even a woman like Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. While sharing her own personal struggle with traditional gender roles in society, in her widely-read book “Lean In” has to remind herself and other women that they are not bad mothers for continuing to pursue their personal journeys, dreams and careers, or for being too tired some evenings to help their children with homework, or for having to miss a school event on account of work.

If you, as a male reader, think this dismissive attitude towards female employment springs from a vacuum, then I urge you to think again; to look inside your home, and talk to the women in your life. May be, they can shed some light on the issue for you! Women all over the world are deterred from pursuing meaningful and long-lasting careers in fear that financial subsistence will eventually breed independence of thought and action. Just as men are discouraged to share the responsibilities at home. The few who share the workload in and out of their homes with their partners are ridiculed for doing so.

The Long Overdue Revolution Must Begin At Home
This system of matrimonial inequality is inherently unfair to both partners. A man should not have to carry the full financial burden of a household just like a woman should not have to throw away her career and become the most qualified house-maid/cook/laundress on her block or street. Where is the sense in that? How are we supposed to leave the tag of a “developing” nation behind, if half of our population is over-worked and the other half is doomed to sulk at the kitchen sink.

You think about the problem of matrimonial inequality long enough and the hypocrisies of this sacred institution that we love to brag about come undone. It rather starts to appear what it is; more like the vicious circle of subjugation and misogyny that it is and has forever been. Sure, it no longer requires a woman to be burnt at her husband’s funeral pyre as the ancient practice of Sati did, or requires a widow to be shunned from society as an embodiment of a bad omen (of course, they have to face a different type of ostracism now). Despite all the progress we have made over the last century, the gender scale is still leaning heavily on one side at the expense of the other, and will continue to do so, until we make it stop. One person. One family. One couple at a time.

Society 2.0
Son preference is rampant presumably because they will take care of their ageing parents, stay with them, provide for them while daughters will be hauled off to another family to cook, clean, bear and rear children, and earn only for the financial betterment of the other family.

In terms of lifetime value, a son is an investment for the future whereas a daughter is deemed a hefty cost to the family. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to do the math here. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy of the fate of the girl child as paraaya dhan (someone else’s wealth) – a metaphor that I especially hate!

Again, some of you will proclaim that it is meant to honour the girl. I personally cannot get past the word: paraaya.

To those who say that it is immoral for a son to be required to leave his parents, I would like to ask, “Since when does living in the same house qualify you as an effective caregiver to a parent? Does the rest of the world, which does not live with their parents after marriage, stop caring for them? Both my brother and I moved out of India to study and work in our early twenties. Does that mean that we have stopped caring for our parents?”

Why can’t a couple take shared responsibility of parents – husband’s parents as well as the wife’s – as equal partners? Are a man’s parents more special and require the sole attention of their daughter-in-law just because they happened to conceive a son? That they somehow won a lottery because they have a son?

The fact of the matter is that the tide has been turning for half a century. Ideas disseminate. Ideas proliferate and people, men, women and the transgender community, begin to question the status quo. Thousands of young families are already migrating to the urban centres of India, in search of brighter future or financial prosperity. Some have been driven out by necessity. Whether the patriarchs like it or not, the word ‘family’ is no longer synonymous with “joint family” when our social fabric is viewed through the lens of modernity.

It’s about time we update our ceremonies, metaphors, Bollywood rhetoric and overall mindsets to reflect the reality on the ground!

(Source: Feminism in India)