Family Short Story – Women still suffer a lot
Photo credit: presto44 from morguefile.com
Its a real life story of 2 ladies, their lives – a mother and her daughter (Prema and Lata respectively). I would start off with Prema first, who got married at a very early age, frankly it would not be wrong if I say that it was a “child marriage”. I would not take your attention in deeper about the reason for being Prema a victim of child marriage since its an incidence of almost 25+ years back when the concept of child marriage was very well accepted by our society and was absolutely not an uncommon thing.
Prema got married, went to her marital home with loads of dreams in eyes and hopes in heart just like any other common bride. Her married life started off well with a perfect blend of joys, happiness, little very common sorrows along with each and every other common emotion of a married life. Everything was going smoothly in Prema’s life up until a sudden point wherein a storm of inevitable problems started to rise in her life thereby bringing her married life to a sudden and absolutely unexpected end.
What happened was quite tragic that Prema’s sister-in-law (Prema’s husband’s sister) who got married to Prema’s brother died during a childbirth while at her maternal home and the complete blame of her death was thrown onto Prema’s maternal family, stating that it was just a case of negligence of Prema’s maternal family. Prema’s husband, in a wrath for taking revenge, literally thrown innocent Prema out of the house along with her just a few months’ old baby girl. She came to her maternal home after being expelled from her in-laws. Every possible way of making a compromise with Prema’s in-laws was made from her maternal side, but that was all in vain. As years and days passed on, Prema’s husband did a second marriage without even letting know about it to Prema or her maternal family and even without taking a divorce from Prema first.
Prema and her family still tried to sort out the issues, but there was nobody who could listen to their restless voices. They were left with no other choice, but to go ahead with legal procedures. Her in-laws were in Rajasthan whereas her maternal home was in Nagpur. She filed a legal case against her husband in Rajasthan and had to often do up-down several times in a month on dates given by the court. Initially, she was always accompanied by her brothers during this Nagpur-Rajasthan-Nagpur journey for court hearings, but as time moved her brothers even found it difficult to manage to go with her due to their own familial responsibilities, after all they too were married and had to give priority to their own families first. Prema had to fight this battle now lonely, i.e. she had to go to Rajasthan and return back from there lonely for each and every court hearing. Sometimes she had to live at her maternal aunt’s home in Rajasthan itself due to nearby dates given by courts, but still she used to take out some time to come to Nagpur and meet her daughter who was growing up at her maternal uncle’s home in Nagpur. Prema was fighting lonely, but boldly to get justice for her and her daughter, I really would say her a REAL IRON LADY, hats off to her courage and bravery.
Meanwhile, her daughter, Lata, like I said, who was growing at her maternal uncle’s home in Nagpur, often used to miss care, love and affection of a mother, as we all know very well that the care and love offered by a mother is absolutely unmatchable. Right from the first minute of waking up in the morning till she goes to bed in night, she would miss her mother badly. At times when other kids would enjoy chocolates or toffees, she did not even have 50 paises to buy one and so had to go to some garland makers where she would help them in making garlands and in return she would get some paises so that she can have a chocolate.
People who knew about her history would always have tears in their eyes after seeing her and they always encouraged her that though her past and present is full of sorrows, future will be all hers and with this slight ray of hope every time she managed to cope with her sorrows and obstacles of life. Her mother used to come to her twice or thrice a month. Of course, there was no father for her and mother too was not always there for her and this is something she still misses a lot, in fact its a huge gap in her life where her whole childhood has gone almost without her parents and this vacant space can never be filled up again.
In these very very uncommon circumstances, she grew up to teenage, her mother’s legal case too was now transferred to Nagpur and henceforth her mother was always there for her. Prema sprinkled her daughter with each and every moral value to make her daughter a totally SANSKAARI (with moral values) girl, she played a very beautiful role of a mother as well as a father to Lata. Prema started a beauty parlor in Nagpur for their livelihood. Lata had always a dream to study more and more and so her mother provided her full freedom for this. They are from a community where girls are allowed at most to get SSC level education only, they are not allowed to learn more than this in any way. But, Prema went against her community people for this; she told everybody clearly and loudly that she is going to give full freedom to her daughter for education and so this way Lata did her SSC, HSC and finally graduation too.
Lata would often come from her college early to help her mother with household chores as well as with the beauty parlour work. Lata was firm in one thing that she will never get married in her life, would find a good job and dedicate her full life to serve her mother throughout her life. Marriage proposals started to come meanwhile for her, but as Lata was frequently denying for them. Whenever Prema tried to talk with Lata regarding any marriage proposal, Lata used to simply tell her mother that she would commit suicide if anybody forces her to get married.
Finally, a proposal came in which the proposed boy was from Nagpur itself and this made Prema think that if she marries her daughter to this guy, her daughter will be always in front of her eyes, i.e. in Nagpur itself. Prema asked one of her very close friends to convince Lata for this proposal and her friend succeeded too in convincing Lata by explaining her that if she gets married, her mother would get a son too as son-in-law who would treat her mother as his own one and would take care of her. Lata got married to this guy not only with the hope but with a firm belief that her mother now will get a son and Lata along with her husband will take care of all the worries of her mother henceforth. But, very soon Lata’s this belief was shattered when she realized that her husband doesn’t even behave like a son-in-law with her mother, so becoming a SON to her mother is something which was even hard to imagine. He doesn’t respect her mother at all. Whenever Lata and her husband go to Lata’s maternal home, he hurts everybody’s heart there and he literally enjoys doing that.
Lata was forced to do a job and start earning just right after her 2nd month of marriage. Her husband doesn’t take any responsibility at all and even today after 6+ years of their marriage, her mother takes care of one and all expense of Lata. Even if Lata gets ill, her mother has to give Lata’s husband 3-4 phone calls to take Lata to a doctor. Lata has 2 kids now and even these kids’ every little expense right from clothing to medical expenses too are taken by Prema herself. This guy has failed in every role – he could not become a good husband, a good son-in-law and not even a good father, then what is the significance of him? He never cares for any of them, such a real moron he is. She says with a heavy heart that she herself never got love and affection of a father and even same is the case with her kids too. In addition she says, two men (her father and so-called husband) have ruined their lives.
She cries now often with a complaint to the almighty that why He has given such lives to her and her mother?? Why He forgot to write good things in their lives?
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