Does abuse cross all boundaries?

Marriage And Beyond

oi-Staff

By Super

Friday, April 20, 2012, 12:44

I left India immediately after my graduation for higher studies. Within a few months a classmate of mine wrote me a letter that she was marrying an Indian born, U.S. raised groom and coming to the States. I was thrilled to hear that, as I didn't have any friends in the U.S. at the time. I lived in the Silicon Valley in California; she was coming to the East Coast, nevertheless it was nice to have someone from back homecoming to the States.

Months passed before I received a letter from her again. She said she would prefer to write than call me. She had noted her number in the letter and I called her and was rather surprised that she was in a joint family and didn't have much privacy to talk.

Over the years she and I developed a strange friendship. Back home we were classmates but our friendship was limited to exchanging class notes and home works. She would call me sporadically and tell me "I will come to California, help me find a job." Slowly but surely I gathered something was not quite right, but could not put my finger on it. She never discussed her husband or his extended live-in family. I didn't ask either. Over the four years she learnt to trust me enough to buy a one-way ticket from coast-to-coast and fly out penniless. She had worked for three years but had given away everything to her husband and his family. She didn't know how to drive. She was full of self-pity and cried most of the time.

I have a rather unique style of dealing with issues. Blunt and harsh with my words but the other person who has figured me out and survived as a friend knows me well enough to know I am caring and mean well. Although at that time she wanted compassion, she got enough of that from the other people she called.

My time with her after I returned from work was never about what he did or what led to her leaving him, I don't recall ever wanting to hear her stories. It was about how we move forward from here.

I taught her driving, helped her buy a used car, helped her put together a resume and showed her how to contact recruiters. She landed a job fairly quickly. We looked for an Indian roommate, as she was not ready yet to be in the main stream. Slowly but surely she was on her feet. We figured out a divorce lawyer and applied for a divorce. Although her husband didn't contact her or try to find her he didn't send her divorce papers either. He had told her he was forced into this marriage and his heart was not with her on the very first day of her arrival in the U.S.

A year later I was at an Indian get together where a girl approached me and said she was involved with an organization called Maitri for two years and she was moving to Texas and she wanted to introduce me to the organization.

My life changed that evening when I sat in the meeting where twenty or so Indian women discussed case after case they were handling. I was in disbelief for the rest of evening. I did not know there was so much physical and mental abuse in the so-called affluent Indian community.