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A Bollywood buff, 23-year-old Shalini can be dancing on Diwali. “I am going to make it my best Diwali because it is a festival that celebrates the idea of homecoming. I am back with my family after making an idiotic mistake,” she says, including that she is not going to be hiding the bruises on her physique with make-up.
A few days earlier than the lockdown was introduced on March 24, Shalini obtained married to a person she had met at a celebration 4 years in the past. “As our bond was quite good, we decided to have a ceremony in a temple against my family’s wishes,” she says. Shalini wrote a crisp notice to her father stating that she didn’t need a single paisa or an inch of his property. “I will prove to you that my husband can keep your daughter happy and achieve success on his own merit,” it mentioned.
The abuse began 15 days later. Her mother-in-law broached the topic of cash — Rs 20 lakh to develop their enterprise. “I refused outright. Before we were married, my husband used to tell me that he had no financial expectations from my family and I believed him,” she says. Her husband, a businessman, turned abusive as his money owed mounted throughout the pandemic. “I could not bear the violence — he was beating me all the time while his mother yelled abuses at me. They would lock me in a room without food, water or electricity. I wanted to leave but where could I go?” she says.
A rise in home violence has been one of many darkest options of the lockdown. The Delhi-based National Commission for Women obtained 1,477 complaints between March and May, a 2.5-time enhance from the 607 circumstances throughout the identical interval in 2019. “People, who are abused, are fearful of reporting it, have low self-esteem and are traumatised. They feel unsafe in their homes and in the lockdown situation, this gets worse because there is no escape,” says Arvinder J Singh, a psychotherapist and founding father of the Centre for Well-Being at Ashoka University in Delhi.
Shalini lastly referred to as her mom on a day when she was crushed so badly she might barely stroll. “My father came over and told my husband, ‘I can’t see my daughter in pain. I am taking her away and will not send her back at any cost’. Suddenly, my home began to mean a lot more to me. I began to see things I had not earlier — that my parents were my best friends who supported me through my mistakes. In India, a daughter’s place is supposed to be her husband’s home but I found a safe space in a place I had always taken for granted,” she says.
The household nonetheless has no reply when neighbours and family ask when Shalini’s husband can be coming to take her “home”. “We are so socially conditioned that I don’t know how to tell them that I am home. Home is the place where I have my father, who, forgetting that I wrote him a scathing letter before my wedding, takes me on surprise trips to Lonavala and Alibaug and plays board games to cheer me up. My mother makes momos and biryani that I enjoy eating. My younger sister watches silly cartoons with me and we laugh,” she says.
Shalini is studying the ropes of divorce proceedings when attorneys ask private questions that drive her to revisit her nightmares. “Marrying is the easy part, getting separated is something else entirely. I am scared and traumatised after answering the lawyer’s questions but, as my parents say, the past is gone while I have my present and future. I am lucky I have a home — and that’s why Diwali is going to be brighter this year,” she says.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
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