Trigger warning: mentions of domestic abuse, suicidal ideation
“I agree to come to the court and agree to marry your son only with three conditions. One I will not be forced to change my name and surname. Two I will not be asked to quit my work. Three I will study and work wherever and whenever I want” were the prerequisites under which my friend, Sheetal* agreed to the marriage.
She also didn’t have her parents’ support because they abandoned her for their daughter was marrying a man who they didn’t approve of. She realised that she was in this marriage alone. So the five-year dating converted into a love marriage. After a year and a half into the wedding, her eyes opened to the gruesome reality of her then-husband and his family members.
“You should leave your study and return back to Jabalpur, have kids and fulfil the needs of your husband like a dutiful wife”, demanded the father-in-law who 1.5 years ago, agreed to the preconditions.
A little backstory can help understand the dynamics here.
Sheetal went for her M.Sc. which meant staying away from her in-laws and her husband for a year and a half. This was, at that time, a mutually agreed upon and appreciated decision between her and her husband, but soon they started having communication problems. Her husband would force her for phone sex. He’d ask for it, three times a day, every day. Sheetal needed to focus on her studies, assignment deadlines, and projects. But when Sheetal refused to have phone sex, her denial was met with aggression because he assumed that marriage equals ownership. Marriage is about accommodation, respect and understanding, especially when he knew of her academic dreams during the 5 years of dating before agreeing to it and also during the marriage. Academic commitments aside, her husband’s entitlement and outright dismissal of her consent were appalling to her.
Fury led to more arguments, eventually making the two stop talking to each other for weeks. The husband complained to his father, an important intermediary in their marriage. “You should know the Patni-dharma is to serve your husband and his family. By going to study, you already challenged this. He (your husband) is getting angrier each day. Maybe something intimate is missing between the two of you because you chose to be selfish. It’s better you return and live like your mother-in-law who maintains the household so well,” her father-in-law summoned.
This was the highlight of Sheetal’s phone call with her father-in-law who she trusted to be an understanding and aware father figure.
But that wasn’t the end of it. More threats followed. The husband’s grandparents started calling Sheetal telling her that she was different from other daughters-in-law but that wasn’t working out anymore. Now she should quit and give them a baby so that they can face society. Denying all of this after the umpteenth call, Sheetal had to face several abusive calls from all her husband’s family members and even relatives. For Sheetal, turning a deaf year towards the situation was an outcry to break apart. She stopped picking up their calls. Soon her best friends started calling her and telling her what an awful thing she was doing by distancing even more. Her best friends kept trying to convince her about having a child and how it changes everything. That after the kid is born, the woman becomes free; her PhD was not running anywhere because there’s no age limit for getting a doctorate.
The pressure of her parents not being there, her friends not understanding her desires, her husband hiding behind his parents and not even talking, and her in-laws continuously abusing and pressurizing to give them a grandchild was too much to bear. She wanted to kill herself as she was made to believe that she is the reason for all the unhappiness in people who love and care for her. She survived but with learnings and realisations of a lifetime. Sheetal’s marriage where her husband thought that marriage is ownership is a telling reality of how far we are from a society that’s equal and inclusive.
We usually think of sexual and reproductive rights and health (SRHR) as confined to decision-making about having or not having children and discussions around safe sex and sexual health concerns. However, SRHR is more than that. It encompasses all the decisions around sex and reproduction — having the rights to bodily integrity and privacy, being able to decide whether and when to be sexually active, rights to choosing sexual partners, who and when to marry, and rights to decide whether or not to have children and how many. SRHR means access to information, resources and freedom from discrimination and exploitation.
Threats to rape are also made both in person and in public spaces. Sheetal went through a similar instance of intimate partner abuse. “I have your nudes. If you don’t agree to let go of your money and gold, don’t blame me if you see these somewhere”, Sheetal’s husband had warned her. See what I’m saying?
“The simple work of accessing SRHR as one’s rightful stance is itself questioned by close ones as invalid and against traditions. SRHR thus needs to be discussed at deeper levels, especially in smaller cities, towns and villages. SRHR is not just policies and rights that should be delivered on constitutions and made agreements about. SRHR has roots that are entangled with society, physical, mental, and family wellbeing. In small towns and cities, the families operate more in a community model where one family’s problems become other families’ bearing. Sheetal’s story is proof. Conversations, leading to awareness, will help create a safe space and normalise the idea of consent, and help people who want to exercise their rights to decide on their bodies, minds and social wellbeing. Sharing this story is one way I’m employing to process what happened with me, find a community and further create safe spaces for others,” Sheetal tells me, about how she envisions the way ahead for herself and for a lot of survivors of abuse and injustice.
*Sheetal‘s name has been changed to protect privacy