The D word has moved from being
unthinkable just a few decades ago to a growing reality of modern India.
In our culture where weddings are celebrated to the point of bankruptcy
and loveless and abusive marriage endured in the name of tradition, its
anti-thesis, divorce, is also finally coming of age. The 'D' word has
moved from being unthinkable just a few decades ago to a growing
reality of modern India. Many would like to blame it on the financial
independence of women. Social commentators however classify this as a
reaction to centuries of hardship and suppression that has been
embedded in the collective psyche of women.
Whatever the reason and whoever is to blame, it comes a poor
second to the real issue which is the breaking up of a family. It is
the trauma and humiliation of watching your personal life being paraded
in the open and the helplessness that you feel when you can't protect
yourself and more importantly, your children from the ugly public spat.
Ask 54-year-old Zoya who lived in her abusive marriage for 30 years
before calling it quits. Zoya and Rustum's love story began in 1956 and
five kids later, he filed for a divorce on grounds of adultery. She
decided to contest it. "The humiliation of watching the man I once
loved accuse me of adultery and claiming that the children were
illegitimate, killed every feeling inside me. A man always attacks a
woman's character because it hurts most and I can't figure out whether
it was marriage or the divorce which was a greater ordeal," says Zoya
who finally won her freedom after 10 years.
But freedom is not all that easy to get. Rashmi (27) an engineer with
an MNC entered into an arranged match to an editor of a leading IT
magazine. Everything seemed perfect on paper and she couldn't wait for
married life to begin. But by the time first month rolled by, the
honeymoon was over in more ways than one. With mood swings that could
shame a schizophrenic coupled with a huge inferiority complex, her
husband just stopped talking to her for no obvious reason, except to
ask for a divorce. She finally agreed and even drafted a mutually
acceptable petition, but her husband changed his mind about signing it.
Two years and counting, her case has not even been filed because her
husband has been stalling the divorce, he asked for! "The sheer cruelty
with which he turned my life upside down on a whim is something I can
never get over. I just want my freedom and the only reason he is making
it difficult is because it appeases his ego," she says. Last seen she
was still doing the rounds of the lawyers' offices trying to end this
nightmare.
But divorce isn't a painful experience only for women. After all,
agony is not exclusive to the fairer sex by the virtue of her gender.
Kumar Jagirdhar had been married for 13 years with a four-year-old
child, when his wife Chetana filed for divorce on the grounds of
incompatibility. "It was a bolt from the blue for me, because we had no
problems in our marriage that could only be solved with a divorce," he
said.
But while the divorce proceedings cleared with as much civility as
possible, the custody battle for their daughter turned ugly.
Kumar has been fighting the case for 10 years now demanding that he be
given the primary custody of his daughter as Chetana had remarried a
celebrity within three months of her divorce and now has two children
in her second marriage.
The agonised father says "She is my only child and I want to
be a full time parent to her and not just have visitation rights.
Why is there a mindset against men, when the law nowhere states that
the mother is a better parent, simply because she is a woman? To
contest my ex-wife's allegation that there was no lady at my home to
take care of our daughter, I remarried and now they argue that there is
a step-mother in the house. It is a no-win situation for the man."
Kumar has now started an NGO, Children's Right Initiative for Shared
Parenting to help fathers who go through the trauma of losing a child
in a custody battle.
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Jun292008/panorama2008062875923.asp
