By Fr. Joe Mannath, SDB –
Kumari was young and good-looking. Like most young women getting married, she had dreams of loving a man, being loved by him, having children, and bringing them up. She was aware of the difficulties of family life, of course, from her own years of growing up, but she still wanted a family of her own
Nothing in her wildest fantasies prepared her for the horror that marriage turned out to be.
The harassment started soon after the wedding—spiteful comments about inadequate dowry, humiliating comparisons to the other daughters-in-law, harsh words, later followed by undisguised insults. Threats followed. Then came physical violence, with no one to turn to for protection.
Kumari soon saw the terrifying truth—that they would go to any length to make her parents pay more money.
But even her frightened heart did not prepare her for what followed.
Bottles of kerosene. Nylon sari on fire. The heat, the smoke, the incredible pain. One more dowry death. Bribes handed out to make it appear an accident.
There are thousands of Kumaris in our country.
Also by the same author, please read: Parables for Today: Marriage as in Heaven
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Jacqueline is a lecturer in a well-known college. Bright, articulate and good in her subject, she is liked by colleagues and students. Hardly anyone suspects that her job is not only a source of income. It is, above all, an escape from an unhappy marriage. A few hours of peace everyday, away from a violent husband. She does her best to hide the evidence of the beatings she receives. It is with dread that she returns home from work.
There are hundreds of thousands of Jacquelines. Wife-beating is common than we like to admit. It is not restricted to any social class.
***
“I am no longer the person I once was,” Mrs. Vijayalakshmi confided. “I got married with great expectations. With my traditional upbringing, I trusted my parents fully, and accepted the husband they picked for me. I was taught to revere him as my lord. What a man he turned out to be! I never knew what alcohol could do to a man. I have seen it all—the hours of verbal abuse, the threats, being chased out of the house at knife-point, hiding in the forest at night with my small children, going without food (since his drinking took the money that should have bought us food), ..
“There were times when I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me…Other times, with no one to turn to, I would write small notes to God and put them behind the holy pictures. It seemed as if God himself did not care. I would write: ‘Are you blind? Are you deaf? Don’t you see what I am going through?’ I have gone through years and years of this…”
There are many Vijayalakshmis for whom marriage is hell. They stay in, either because of the children, or because they see no other options. Where would they go, if they ran away? This insecurity makes the brutes they are married to all the more confident in their perverse habits.
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Arun’s idealism and high character were severely tested after he got married. The in-laws cheated him outright. His wife turned out to be very different from what he had been told. Her gossip and dishonesty made him hated for crimes he never committed. “My marriage,” he told a counsellor, “is the biggest fraud that has ever been committed on me.”
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Sandhya is a brilliant college student. After attending the wedding of a relative, she told me: “People wished the young couple, shouting: ‘Congratulations!’ Actually, they should be saying: ‘Condolences!’ because most of them are themselves unhappy. I cannot think of any couple present—including my parents—who are really happy. Why should we pretend that marriage is a happy choice?”
No wonder a number of young women do not want to get married. They dread marriage, rather than desire it. Or, at best, many are resigned to getting married, since they hardly see other options.
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Father Albert, a good friend of mine, once told me: “When I was a young priest, I used to notice the well-dressed, smiling families in church. They looked happy. When they would leave, I would come to my room, and feel sorry for myself. Their lives looked fuller and happier than mine.
“After just a year or two in the parish, I think very differently. I have got to know lots of families. Now, I ask myself: ‘Is any family happy?’ There is so much pain and hurt all around.”
***
Alcoholism. Violence. Cheating. Physical and emotional cruelty. Constant nagging. Coldness and indifference. Incessant fault-finding. Repeated humiliations. Malicious gossip breeding suspicion and hatred. Wounds that hurt people deeply in the most intimate of relationships that ought to have been an experience of deep love.
Most of the victims do not even speak about their wounds. They are too private, too personal, at times too shameful, too painful to relive.
Marriages, meant to show us something of God’s tender and passionate love for us, can degrade into inhuman prisons, or torture chambers. There is a Latin proverb, corruptio optimi pessima (“When the best gets rotten, it is the worst.”). Marriage is the chance for two human beings to meet in the most tender and caring of ways, give and receive love without calculations. When this most intimate bond gets poisoned, the pain it causes is beyond telling, and the consequences are devastating.
Most marriages, thank God, do not end up as hell. Nor are they exactly an earthly paradise. They fall somewhere in between. Another parable will look at this messy—but hopeful—midfield.
This article first appeared in The New Leader
ather (Doctor) Joe Mannath SDB is the National Secretary of the Conference of Religious of India (CRI). He is a Seminary formator/professor for 18 years, and professor at Madras University (12 years), visiting professor in the US (some 20 summers), as well as in Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Spain, Thailand and UK. He conducts seminars for educators, religious and priests; counseling; parish ministry; past president of the Association of Christian Philosophers of India and of the Salesian Psychological Association. He is a member of British Mensa; a thinker listed in the Marquis “Who’s Who” in the world. He’s also linguist who knows English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Malayalam, Spanish and Tamil. Studies: M.A. and Ph. D. from Rome, research in psychology and religion at Oxford University, post-doctoral visiting scholar at Harvard University and Boston College. Also an Author/editor of both academic and best-selling books (including University textbooks) and hundreds of articles; enjoys friendships, jokes and cartooning. E-mail: [email protected]