" Whatever happens now,I will not be silent.I will run away with kids if I've to "

Representative image ( Credit : Umang Arora)

By: Umang Arora
“My husband wouldn’t use protection, Didi. I’ve to buy contraceptive pills every now and then. I now have started to feel pain in various parts of my body. He would drink daily. I don’t know what to do. I cannot even leave him. My children will suffer,” says Kusum*, a woman in her mid-forties who hails from Uttar Pradesh and works as a home maid at several houses in Jalandhar city.

This is not just the story of Kusum. Many women, living in the villages of rural North India, virtually go through similar experiences. Dominated by the husband, tortured by the in-laws, they often don’t speak to anyone about the misery they put up with.  Domestic violence related to dowry and sex determination is a matter of regular occurrence for them, even today.

“He even said that if I get pregnant somehow, he’ll dump me and marry someone else,” says Kusum with fear in her eyes. Kusum’s story about how she manages to go home at the end of the day to face her husband is a shaking one.

Kusum has three boys but her husband won’t let any of them go to school.  He wants them to pick up errands available in the residential complexes in the city, like washing people’s cars, which will pay up small sums. She has tried several times to enroll them in the school but he wouldn’t let them go.

The misery does not condone the hard work needed to earn the daily bread.  Her daily shift starts from 8 in the morning till 9 in the night. She would find extra part time work as well to make the ends meet. “Whatever I earn at the end of the month, he manages to snatch away. Even if I try to hide it from him, he would make me swear by my children. I cannot lie then.” Kusum’s husband usually takes away all the money and spends it on booze.

“Fortunately”, her mother-in-law has died but it is her husband now, who is making life a hell for her. “It’s good if this person also dies, I’ll sail my kids somehow,” she murmurs.  “My mother gave bed, utensils, jewelry and what not; still my in-laws used to beat me up and would ask me to get cash from my mother. My mother has brought up us three sisters on her own” recalls Kusum.

Her father would beat up her mother when they used to live in their gaon. As a little girl, she would see her sisters getting beaten up by her father and in-laws. “Every night my father used to beat my mother for not giving birth to a boy,” recalls Kusum. When it became unbearable, her mother ran away from there. She was carrying her fourth child in the womb at that time.  “Hamaari taraf aisa he hota hai! (This is what happens at our side!),”shrugs Kusum.

There’s a long, long battle for Kusum to fight through. For herself and her children. “The bastard doesn’t even die! Whatever happens now, I will not be silent. I will run away with kids if I’ve to,” says Kusum.

*Name changed for the privacy