People

Cri de Coeur:
A Cry From The Heart

by A. KAUR

The word pierces through my heart and shatters it to a million pieces. Pieces that will never be a part of the whole again.

The finality of the word, the sheer permanence of it, is hard to contemplate.

Recently, I told my husband that I did not see a future with him and that divorce (the dreaded word) was a more likely scenario.

Not easy words to come by, but this story has been unraveling, often spinning out of control, for a long time, ever since my in-laws began living with us, having arrived from India.

It hadn't always been this way. My husband and I had got along fine until then, with the occasional tit-for-tat that is typical of married life. Actually, I thought then that we had a good marriage and got along really well.

In retrospect, I wonder if it was a good relationship at all. If the foundation was really strong, then why did things crumble and fall merely because we had a problem? This question still lingers and consumes an endless amount of my time and energy.

My story is not any different than many other women. Recently my sister asked me, "What went wrong?"

I was blindsided by this question since she had been a witness to all the incidents and it has been three years since my husband walked out of the door with his family, to live on his own. I wondered why she had asked me that question, what was the real question.

The psychological landslide triggered by that question brought back the time when my husband banged like a maniac on the bathroom door where I had retreated to take a shower before going to work. When I came out, his clenched fists punched me in the ribs and sides, all while my mother-in-law looked on. At one point she did try to intervene and I tried to hit my husband back. I managed to hit him in the face in self-defense. He threw me to the sofa, sat on me and again used his fists. I don't remember the punches as much as the words that came out of my mother-in-law's mouth.

She said: "jaa, jithay tu jaana tu jaa, saada kherra chhudd!" (go wherever it is you want to go, leave us alone).

At that moment I realized that I would never be treated with respect or with fairness by this woman. Hadn't she just witnessed her son beating his wife and she was taunting me to call the police? A clever woman she is. After all, she had been the one to goad her son into assaulting me in the first place. She knew exactly which buttons to push and which suggestions to make to ensure that her son did as she asked. All along she knew what she was doing.

The funny thing is that she gets up at amrit vela to do paatth and visits the gurdwara each morning and prides herself as being a gursikh.

I left home for a few days with my children. Well, actually, I was forced to leave. When I returned, I went upstairs to hug my mother-in-law. She sat with a stone-face, and did not reciprocate nor say a word.

On a previous occasion, I had touched both my mother-in-law's and my father-in-law's feet because of a perceived slight.They had said I was being mouthy, I accepted my mistake, not knowing at the time that this was a family which was used to exaggerating and making small things overly dramatic. I also dismissed it because they were still new to the country and did not understand the forthright nature of those who grew up here.

These days, my mother-in-law has been encouraging her son to get a divorce and get married again. Rather than encouraging him to work at healing the wounds To this day, she still insists that she does not know what went wrong in our marriage and that she had she herself had nothing to do with it. 

I can't say that my own family, my flesh and blood, made it any easier for me. I was expected to do as told, to suck it up and do whatever it took to keep the family intact. I tried to do that for seven years, keeping resentment at bay while sacrificing my health and well-being.

I remember dreading the very thought of going home after work, because for me it symbolized a battleground with the lines clearly demarcating my husband's position in favour of his family. The drives home from work were unpleasant;  I began to suffer from panic attacks and, once home, I would be angry and fearful all at the same time. A home is supposed to be a sanctuary, a place where one goes to find solace and respite during times of suffering. Even the thought of going home to my two little girls could not keep those feelings at bay.

I work in the post secondary education field and am blessed to have to two solid months of vacation time in the summer.

However during the dark days, my vacation time was a curse. I continued to look for a way and a place to escape to. Many times I would leave work early and go to my parent's house to find some comfort in their home. I would immediately take a two-hour nap. Now I know that it was a sign of depression.

I told my parents little of what was going on at home at the time. I did not want them to worry and I felt I could deal with things on my own. I am sure they knew I wasn't doing well. My dad turned a blind eye while my mother's questions burdened me with more worry rather than relief.

My family tried to brow-beat me into staying quiet, to not say anything, to ignore my mother-in-law's interference. Their justification was that every woman has to do this and that I owed it to my girls to keep the family together. They told me I was being selfish, that I was putting my emotions and needs before my children's.

While we do sacrifice many emotions and feelings for our children, it is very hard to minimize the feelings of sadness and unhappiness. Children are more perceptive to imbalance. They could sense that things were not right even though they may not have had the words to articulate them.

In the meantime, my life turned into a circus.

People who had no business being involved were offering their opinions. My family involved others; they said they were 'trying to help'. My mom's brother from England asked me if they could intervene. I was not sure because he had a rocky relationship with my mom and his insistence seemed a bit suspicious. I relented because of the pressure from my older sister and brother-in-law.

I now  regret this very much. Rather than finding a solution, he only wanted to gather ammunition to use against my mom, to fling sibling rivalries in her face.

He was the one who encouraged my husband to leave.

This was a blessing in disguise. In the past, my husband had been trying to get me to leave the house; he said he wanted to create room for his relatives who were soon to emigrate from India and did not want me to put up with the hassle. I remember driving around in the city looking for a place for the girls and I and wondering how things were going to unfold.

Four months later my husband left our home. While packing, my mother-in-law kept saying to her son: "kaaka, ah veeh lai kai   jaana ai, ah veeh lai kai jaana ai!" (son are we taking this, and we are taking this ...)

Rather than make an effort to prevent the break-up of the home, she taunted me and rubbed it in my face. Later she asked him to help one of her friends whose husband had died, while her son's own family was dying a death of its own that day.

Not once did she ask what was wrong, she never made an effort to keep the family intact. Instead it was all blamed on me and she was the innocent victim, just like the rest of the family. I remember her telling someone that when her son was born, it was written in his taveh (a Hindu custom) that he would have two marriages.

Useless to point out that these very practices are not condoned in Sikhi, but why even put the thought our there in the first place.

These days, my mother-in-law is suggesting to my husband to get a divorce and get married again (meanwhile my mom says don't ruin your children's lives by getting involved with someone else, try to get closer with the one who has been chosen for you).

I suppose that is my mother-in-law's way of exacting revenge - for what? -  to teach me a lesson. I wonder when all the paatth and prayer she does is going to take effect? You see, I have been wrong about one thing, I thought she was MY worst enemy but not so, somewhere in my husband's destiny it was written that his worst enemy would take shape on this earth, in this life, in the form of his own mother!

There are many success stories of couples with children who have remarried and live fulfilling lives. Another marriage is not the solution, neither for my husband nor me. It is up to the elders, in this case, his parents to make amends, because to this day they continue to deny that they were responsible nor do they admit to any wrong doing. Does a proper gurusikh not say sorry and ask for forgiveness? Does he not ask for the opportunity to make amends?

January 26, 2012

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