It is heart-breaking to know that while we, middle-class & elite-class people fight for our rights to education, freedom and girl-power, we forget the very basic need of a poor-class woman: the need to feel human.
A woman who works for me, named Resham*, tells the story of her abusive husband, and how she’s been surviving the marriage through all these years.
“Baji, I was very young when I got married, and I didn’t really know anything except to please my husband and never talk back,” she told me, while fixing my hair.
“I was hurt when he used to go out late at night and indulge in gambling and alcohol, but I never said anything for the sake of my son, whom I have been paying for to go to a good school and get the right education. When he grows up, he will work for his mother and take me someplace far away,” she said, her eyes shining in delight.”
She told me that she had kicked him out at night a day before, because he had brought a woman home, with a duplicate key to the main door that he had not told his wife, Resham about.
“Baji, I saw the woman, and she was already married too. I cannot believe that she used to call my husband and tell him that his husband had left for so and so place, and that my husband was free to come over at that time. I abused him and kicked him out of the house. I pay the rent, and the fees for my kid, and he does nothing. I shouldn’t even be taking care of all these finances, but I am and I don’t need him if he doesn’t need me.”
I feel sad for the situation of these women, who work in our houses and have so many stories to tell. They are so broken, so overwhelmed with grief, and so gripped in sorrow that we often forget our shortcomings and worries, as they are nothing compared to the problems of these helpless women.
If you have any ideas on helping out these women, and making their lives better so they’re not dependent on immoral men, please share with us. Calling on all feminists to work on the REAL issues.
*The name of the story-teller has been changed, for safety reasons.
