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It's easy to say from a place of privilege that women should be strong and not tolerate abuse, but for the first time I witnessed why many women can't get out of such a hell.
It’s easy to say from a place of privilege that women should be strong and not tolerate abuse, but for the first time I witnessed why many women can’t get out of such a hell.
The other day I decided to visit a very old friend of mine. It had been almost 20 years that I had met her. She was my college friend. I was very excited to meet her as I was meeting her after ages. I remembered the good old times and was eagerly waiting to meet her.
With bated breath, I rung her doorbell. The door opened. A frail lady with dark circles opened the door. The smile resembled that of my friend.
Yes… she was my friend! I was aghast to see what she had turned into. She was same age as me, in the 40s, yet she looked much older. Her eyes were sunken with dark circles, there was no glow on her face, she was shabbily dressed. She hardly smiled during our conversations.
As we went on to share what changes had taken place in our life in the past 20 years, she confided how she was enduring an abusive marriage. Her husband and in-laws had left no stone unturned to humiliate her, torture her, make her life hell. Her parents, like many Indian parents out there, had turned a blind eye to her ordeals. She wasn’t allowed to pursue her career and hence she was financially dependent. She had to endure the torture day in and day out. Her child was in severe depression and trauma due to the negative circumstances in the house.
I was pained and shattered. I remembered how this friend of mine was happy-to-lucky, always smiling, ambitious, had dreams to achieve a lot of things in her life. She loved to dress up, put on makeup, hang out with friends. Here she was all sad, shabby, unhappy, pained, tortured, depressed. She told me she didn’t want to get married so early, but her parents didn’t care to listen to her and got her married off to finish off their ‘duties’.
I realized that it was very easy for me to advice her to get out of that hell, but she said her husband had threatened to kill her and her child dare she complained against him or try to leave. She had lost all her confidence as a result of years of humiliation. She had nowhere to go as her parents had turned their back on her. She had no money to sustain her and her child.
We can write loads of articles on how women shouldn’t be living in a hell and be strong, but for the first time I witnessed why many women can’t get out of such a hell.
What had that girl transitioned into in 20 years? Who was responsible for the slow death of a happy and ambitious girl into a living corpse? Why didn’t she get the respect, love, and freedom she deserved? Her own parents, husband, in-laws, society had let her down. They had killed a lovely happy girl and pushed her into depression.
As I bid my friend adieu, I simply hoped she have the courage to get out of that abusive marriage some day and regain her lost confidence and happiness again.
Image source: a still from the film The Lunchbox
I am a travel expert by profession and an avid blogger by passion. Parenting and women's issues are something that are close to my heart and I blog a lot about them. read more...
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Children should be taught to aspire to be successful, but success doesn't have to mean an IIT admission only!
Imagine studying for 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 whole years for the JEE exam only to find out that there’s only a very, very slim chance of getting into an IIT. It is a fact widely acknowledged that the IIT-JEE is one of the toughest exams not just in India but in the whole world. Apart from IITs, the NITs and IIITs of India also accept the JEE scores for admission. There are said to be a total of 23 IITs, 31 NITs and 25 IIITs across the country.
Now, let’s first get a few facts about the IITs right. First, according to the NIRF rankings of 2023, only 17 IITs rank in the top 50 engineering colleges of India and only a few (around 5) IITs are in the list of the world’s top 100 engineering colleges. Second, the dropout rate of IIT-qualifying students stands at least at 20%, with reasons being cited ranging from academic pressure and unmanageable workload to caste discrimination and high levels of competition within the IIT.
So, it’s quite clear that the journey of making it through IIT is as challenging as the journey of getting into an IIT. Third and most important of all, the acceptance rate or the odds of getting into an IIT are below 3% which is a lot lower than the acceptance rate of highly and very highly ranked US universities. Four, getting into an IIT of one’s choice doesn’t mean one will also get into a branch of one’s preference at that IIT.
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