Beauty and superstition- a lethal tango for
women in India
Some weeks ago
one of my relatives died. She was suffering from a rare form of cancer and due
to time lapses in obtaining medical aid, her disease progressed fatally and she
met an untimely end.
When my relative
R was alive, she was greatly admired for her beauty and grace. In her youth she
was the cynosure of all eyes. Naturally the web of rumours flew fast and thick
and circled around her. People were jealous of her beauty and sought to malign her
reputation. Her husband was posted frequently across various places, and hence
she could not have a career. Neither did her husband permit her to work, citing
her responsibilities to her family. Her talents dried up over time in the same
way as a plant would dry up in a desert over lack of water.
Her married life was fairly good, yet after a
certain point of time she developed depression. R frequently complained of
diseases present in her body and of shadowy characters who would hang around
their rented house in her husband’s absence. She worried over trivial issues
and confided more than once, that she feared for her life. Towards the latter
part of life, R’s domestic life became chaotic: her husband had a violent
streak in him and often assaulted her physically. Moreover she was subjected to
jibes from him. Her health took a heavy toll which worsened over time, till she
lost the battle to cancer.
Today R is no
more. She suffered greatly on account of her beauty some people say. I want to
pose some questions to people now:
Is it a crime to have a beautiful face?
Does a person’s beauty give the impression
that she is a good prey for all those sadistic predators hanging around the
corners?
Why should a girl suffer taunts if she is
not pretty at all yet has brains to prove her worth?
Why married women cannot have a career if
they are willing to exercise their wishes?
Why is it that in some parts of India, a
woman who asserts her rights is branded a witch?
Or if she complains of sickness or diseases
people are likely to take her to an ojha
than a doctor?
That if she complains of domestic violence,
people are likely to check her horoscope for some planetary influence and ask
her to ‘settle down amicably’ with her husband, rather than file a complaint on
her behalf at the nearest police station and shirk away from providing any
monetary aid or offering mental solace to the victim, prevent her from
self-guilt and confusion over her priorities?
Why is it that we do not wish upon to
intrude upon ‘family privacy’ inspite of the telling signs of domestic
violence, though we are eager to scoop up any juicy tales of marital infidelity
or rapes happening across the state or country from our friends and neighbours,
or are willing participants in the morbid craze to comment on the personal
lives of any woman in our neighbourhood?
Why do we believe that only alcoholics
assault their wives and disbelieve reports of non-alcoholics/tea-tollers/pan-chewers/beedi
smokers assaulting their wives as well, citing that perhaps the wife ‘must have
triggered it by her loud mouth’?
I have no
answers to these questions. The smoke rising from R’s funeral bears mute
testimony to her memories and the agony she suffered at the price of being an
woman born in a cynical society and married to a despotic husband. I wish I was
old enough to ring the bell on her behalf.