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Matters escalated, and she went full on aggressive from yelling and screaming at me, to calling my parents names, and abusing them for my 'wrongful upbringing'.
Matters escalated, and she went full on aggressive from yelling and screaming at me, to calling my parents names, and abusing them for my ‘wrongful upbringing’.
At the age of 23 I agreed to an arranged marriage. He was 10 years older than me. He was absolutely charming, and humour was our mode of communication.
COVID struck us like all other couples, and we spend our 1 year of engagement period over phone. Everything was fine with us and the only issue I faced was his overbearing mother, who refused to like me despite not even knowing me that well. “As far as the guy is amazing it’s all gonna be okay” was the advice I got, and I decided to go through with the marriage.
So we got married earlier this year. Since I was a student I had to keep travelling to my college quite often. As a result I stayed for a period of 3 months in total with my in-laws in the whole 8 months duration of our marriage.
Initially it was a passive aggressive mother-in-law who made my life miserable. From fabricated lies about me to instigating my husband to fight, she tried everything she could. It surprised me how he never saw the truth, though he knew his mother quite well.
Matters escalated, and she went full on aggressive from yelling and screaming at me, to calling my parents names, and abusing them for my ‘wrongful upbringing’. She would focus on how my father would call and talk to her son without prior permission from her, or why I sit in our room and romance with him, or why I wear his clothes and slippers, or why I make him spend lakhs on my shopping (a blatant lie of course).
I officially moved out a few months ago. My husband dropped me back at my home, and his response to the whole issue was “You should ignore my mother! I won’t move out, you can’t only have me and not have my family.” Even though I repeatedly explained that I would take care of his parents, and all I wanted was to stay separate to avoid these kinds of fights and issues, as neither he nor his father were capable of controlling his mother.
The conversation started to shift to the root of all our problems, which has always been the dowry. There were now talks about how the 50 lakhs that were given to him were “mere peanuts” and that my parents sent me off like a beggar! And if he and his family should “wait till my father died in order to get more money to enjoy life and shop and go on trips!”
Well, that was the last nail in the coffin of our marriage. Being a 24 year old married woman itself is embarrassing in my generation, let alone being divorced, and that too in a marriage which had lasted less that 8 months.
I refused to be in a marriage where money was more important than love, where you “wait for my father to die in order to get the money I should,” for him and his family to live. But above all I refused to be in a marriage with a spineless husband who had no opinions and stands of his own, even when he sees the woman he married crying inconsolably after being harassed for no fault of her own. There was a time when I would have thought he would change, but I have grown up enough to know nobody changes unless they want to.
Some nights as I lay down to sleep I wish he had loved me even a tiny bit, and not married me as a solution to all his financial issues! And yeah I will be the laughing stock of the town for a while, but what’s more painful is that I believed a man who had lied. I believed he loved me, and I let him fool me yet again, and for that I will never forgive myself.
Image source: a still from the short film Methi ke Laddoo
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Being a writer, Nivedita Louis recognises the struggles of a first-time woman writer and helps many articulate their voice with development, content edits as a publisher.
“I usually write during night”, says author Nivedita Louis during our conversation. Chuckling she continues,” It’s easier then to focus solely on writing. Nivedita Louis is a writer, with varied interests and one of the founders of Her Stories, a feminist publishing house, based in Chennai.
In a candid conversation she shared her journey from small-town Tamil Nadu to becoming a history buff, an award-winning author and now a publisher.
Nivedita was born and raised in a small town in Tamil Nadu. It was for schooling that she first arrived in Chennai. Then known as Madras, she recalls being awed by the city. Her love-story with the city, its people and thus began which continues till date. She credits her perseverance and passion to make a difference to her days as a vocational student among the elite sections of Madras.
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