-2012, After reading an Article on BBC as how Indian Brides were battered in some regions.
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My eyes were puffy with a trace of wetness around the
lids. I blinked back tears that suddenly threatened to overcome me. The news
had obviously cast a gloom over the entire family. I have been moping around
the house ever since he had committed suicide during a hit depression. Nothing
anyone did could lift me out of my state of deep shock. In a single moment my
fate had twisted; I had lost my husband, I had two mouths to feed and another
was on the way. It would be the most difficult challenge in my life, but I knew
I had to face it. How was I going to manage; only time could tell.
Grief, remorse and depression covered me like a thick
choking blanket. I used to feel so wretched after being slapped and locked up
by the monster. Ironically now that he is dead I should have been swelling with
happiness, but my children’ dark future perturbed me. All the widow lamenting
sessions were fun playing, I would simply curl my lips in a smile when I truly
felt like bursting into laughter. But then again the same unanswered questions
would burn endlessly in my mind, my inner voice would scream in silent anguish
and betrayal as I would sink into the shadowed corners of the rooms, trying to
hold my head in my hands whilst tears kept flowing: my daughters, what would
happen to them? In this society where women are principally looked down upon
and where the death of the husband is considered to be the in-auspiciousness of
the wife, I preferred not to even look at the dimly lit alleys of the future.
Coupled with a financial instability, I refrained from imagining all the
atrocities that we would have to bear from my in-laws to whom we now are
nothing else than a huge burden and stigma.
I was not unaware of my rights under the modern law but
my low status, destitute and my daughters were my weaknesses. I was now seen as
a bad woman; since it is a wife’s duty to keep her husband alive and I was dishonored since I am outliving him. During Teej, a Hindu festival where women
fast and pray to Lord Shiva for the long life of their husbands, my family
forced me to confine myself to my own room. They didn't want me to touch
anything for puja, a process of offering to God. I felt like as if I was
suffering from some transferable disease. I was told to only wear white
clothes, eat only once a day and was forbidden to wear cultural tokens like the
red powder that is put on the forehead of married Hindu women, and bangles. I
was made to suffer both shame and guilt and my sister-in-laws would always
taunt me while my mother herself told me that the reason for my widowhood was
the sins of my past life. We were shunned from community activities, gatherings
or festivities. My daughters would be reprimanded for everything they did and
were made to feel even more inferior in contrast to earlier times just because
they could not be heirs to the palace. Unable to bear the perennial tortures, I
finally decided to sell my jewellery and under the dark sky as lightning struck
and thunder rumbled, I escaped away from the gallows with my progenitures.
I had already faced the suffocation put forward by my own
family and society, now it was somehow time to try to start afresh. Today, I
stand in a hair saloon. In the misty pair of dark spheres of my eldest daughter
now far away from the chastisements, I can see her dismay and
disappointment of seeing her mother who once used to be the decked up by others
who would cherish her, having to take care of the tresses of unknown strangers.
Her mother might have been battered by her husband, but she used to exude a
halo of happiness that she easily extended to others; she vibrated with life. Her
greatest challenge was indeed to see the people who crowned her metamorphose,
to accept judgements, critics and punishments despite being rebellious by
nature and to have moved away from the land she had vowed to die in.