We often expect abuse and violence is a thing of the uneducated. But after this story, you will think twice about the so called educated elite.
This is the story of a Mumbai-based mum of two daughters who stayed in an abusive marriage for 20 years. She could not fight off an educated, and abusive husband and even her daughters had to face his brunt.
But all this changed when she decided that she had had enough! This is the story of a mother who decided to reclaim her life. Featured in Karishma Mehta’s Humans of Bombay series, this mother’s story has become viral and is attracting praise and strength from across the country.
It started with young love and then ‘this’ happened!
“At 17, We met when we were at medical school. He started pursuing me and within a few months we were seeing each other — it was like a fairytale. I was one of the toppers of my class, had big dreams for myself and I’d been dating the man I loved. I realised later that his parents wanted him to marry a Marwari girl while I was Punjabi,” the mum begins.
“They also wanted me to give up my education, but that’s something my parents didn’t allow — so even though I completed my masters their condition for our marriage was that I would never work — I was so madly in love that I agreed to everything.
It started on the first night of my wedding when I didn’t bleed and he was convinced I wasn’t a virgin — he tortured me the whole night accusing me of sleeping with someone else,” says the mum of two.
She continues to narrate her ordeal that became violent as soon as the couple returned from their honeymoon.
“After we returned from our honeymoon he beat me up because I bought a kohl pencil for my sister —this happened in front of his parents who agreed with him. I had to wash clothes, cook, clean but never work. They allowed me to go to my father in law’s clinic but only to dust his desk— I was given strict instructions to never attend to any patient.”
It did not end there. She was tortured for bearing a girl child.
“After a few years I got pregnant and he sobbed because it was a girl — he accused me of not giving him a boy. He began to drink, woke up at noon everyday and went to work whenever he wanted, because his father handled everything,” she says.
Continue reading to see what she did when her husband sat on her stomach while she was pregnant with her second baby.
She says, “I never told my parent’s any of this but I broke when I was pregnant for the 2nd time. I’d just returned from England and was trying to talk to him when he told me to get lost. I took my daughter with me to the hall to sleep when he came out drunk, accused me of brainwashing our daughter against him, sat on my stomach and beat me until my entire face was bleeding.”
She then called her father, who came over to help their daughter.
“I called my dad at 4 in the morning and his parents came too, but instead of stopping him, they said I must have done something to ‘provoke’ him. My parents said they would call the cops and that’s when he said, ‘I won’t beat you again but I will f*** your mind,’” she added.
And he did exactly what he had promised her!
“After his father passed away he would drink from 8:30 pm until 7 am and gamble instead of paying our daughter’s fees. At night, he would throw cold water on me and say ‘be thankful it’s water and not piss’, he would touch me wherever he felt like and call me all sorts of names in front of family and friends,” she said.
“My daughters were terrified, but 3 of us would sleep together and let him keep banging at the door. My older daughter is an athlete so we would wake up at 5 in the morning to go run at Juhu beach, while he was still drinking. Sometimes he would follow us. He would go upto my daughter in front of all her friends and say, ‘where the fuck is your mother…who is she fucking now?’ My daughter would try to calm him down and say that I was just walking with the other mothers,” narrated the Mumbai mum.
However, as everything comes to an end, this abuse also faced its ‘breaking point.’
“The breaking point came when his verbal abuse passed onto my daughters. He started calling them sluts and whores and my older daughter had a nervous breakdown in school. I decided to leave him and when he came back home after being in rehab for the 4th time we decided to not let him in,” she said.
“Even after all this, I helped him get back on his feet, start practicing and even lent him my own money…but then he got me removed from the hospital where I was filling in for him while he had been drinking. Until today, he hasn’t paid for anything for my daughters… even though he has 3 clinics,” she added.
But she had had enough of this abuse and violence. She finally decided to take matters in her own hands and something extraordinary.
“At first I didn’t know what to do but after 20 years I decided to open my own clinic —I didn’t want any form of dependence. I work round the clock – pay for the clinic and house expenses. That man has even taken a loan against my name and he refuses to give me a divorce until I leave the house that my father and him bought together,” she said.
Image courtesy: Humans of Bombay
“It’s been a dreaded 20 years, but my daughters have kept me going. They stick little notes on my wall saying ‘we are strong’ ‘we love you mom’ — and that has given me the strength to give them the life they deserve and finally be…free,” she concludes.
Bravo!
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