Geetanjali Krishna: The loving face of misogyny

Over the last one year, every now and then, Munni had told me about her daughter's plight. Married to an abusive alcoholic, she often fled to her parents' house when things got out of control. Within days, invariably, Munni's husband would drop the girl back to her "home". "She has two children below five and another on the way. We can barely make ends meet ourselves, so supporting her is not possible. How will my daughter survive if she leaves her man? This way, at least her children and she aren't starving…," Munni would say, her eyes full of torment. The other day, I saw her looking more troubled than usual and asked what the matter was.

"Last week, my daughter's husband had a stroke in the middle of the night. We all rushed him to the nearest hospital but by then he'd lost control of his legs, his head was tilted unnaturally and he couldn't speak." The family kept him in the hospital for three days but there was no improvement. "We consoled his parents," said Munni, "by telling them that our daughter was a good girl. She'd look after him well, and could even take up a domestic position to supplement their household income." How would she manage to work with young children to tend to, I asked, wondering how the parents could have made such a claim without thinking it through. "It's her duty to look after her husband and home isn't it?" Munni asked. "She's a woman, she has to manage..." Anyway, she said that this argument was moot as the daughter's in-laws flatly refused to allow her to get a job. Eventually, just when the family decided to bring her husband home, fearing that there was little the hospital could do, Munni's daughter went into labour and delivered a healthy baby girl.

"You can't imagine how unhappy they were!" said Munni. "The father-in-law left the hospital without setting his eyes on the baby, while the mother-in-law stayed there, glaring at the baby and bemoaning her fate. They behaved as if it was my daughter's fault," she said, her eyes tearing up. "It rent my heart to see my own daughter in that position." Then she said something that left me reeling. Munni said, "That's when I realised that having a second daughter was truly a curse for my poor girl. One day, when her daughters come of age, she too will have to spend her days safeguarding and continuously worrying about their modesty. If the girls step out of the confines of their home even to go to school, she will have to listen to the barbs of neighbours and relatives. And then, when they marry, she will have to endure the agony of watching them be ill-treated by their husbands and in-laws - for this is the way of the world." She told me that was why she'd not educated her own two daughters beyond class five, and had kept them as protected as possible while they were with her. "This is what was done to me, and this is what I did with them. What can I do? I'm a mother after all!" she cried.

Later, after she left, I couldn't stop thinking about Munni's daughter. The young girl faced the prospect of a lifetime of caring for her husband who'd tormented her when he'd been able to, being dependent on the largesse of her in-laws who blamed her for giving birth to two daughters and rearing her three young children somehow. Most of all, all she had for support were loving but misogynistic parents who had, consciously or unconsciously, shaped her life and her circumstances. And I realised that often, like charity, misogyny also begins at home.