Can she live??


Saw this program on TV a couple of days back, and some for reason, have not been able to get it out of my mind...its not the most pleasant of features I have seen in a long time unfortunately. It was about people trapped in unfulfilling and unhappy marriages…was mostly about women, and being one myself its always easier to identify with something like that. This program showed this story about a woman who was trapped in an unhappy marriage, not looked after by the husband, not even looked at would be more apt though. “An object of use” is how the woman described herself…and one did not need any corroboration to support her point…sorrow written large on her face…there is so much that women face in their lives, marriage and beyond. Children, the prime, and sometimes the only reason why these women forced themselves to stay in relationships that would only suffocate and asphyxiate them for life. Life, if there was any!

Some, however, were strong. They preferred to come out of such tangles. And I am in awe of such women. Why? For obvious reasons. Divorce, not really the word our so-called society looks at with much respect. Disdain, that’s the only expression I have ever seen on any one’s face when confronted with the word.
Forget the misery of the woman who was caught in that marriage. Forget that she too has a right to a happy marriage, a satisfying life. Forget that she too has a right to another option if the first did not work out. We, most shamefully, are that very society and we gossip about her, make fun of her, and find fault in her. ‘She must have been too headstrong for the husband maybe, maybe she was too career oriented…must not have cared for the husband well….whatever it was, must have been her fault’. Haven’t we heard these lines too often for our own comfort? The women ought to be at fault if she had the guts to ask for separation and divorce. Why can’t we respect her right to choice. The choice to say No. Say No, to ignominy, to abuse and suffering? And say Yes to a life where she can look at herself with self esteem and pride, see herself as an individual and not merely as an accessory, an object ?

Why do people make such a big deal about Divorce? No one wants to marry a divorcee, worse still if it’s the first time the man is stepping into matrimony? Does it make a woman any less worthy than she would have been had she never made that one mistake, that one mistake of marrying the man she shouldn’t have?
Aren’t we tormenting further a woman who has already been subjected to enough pain and suffering? Why must we bring our archaic thoughts, prejudices, whims and fancies in someone else’s way? Why can’t we, the society, just let people live their own lives??