Women who feel they’ll be third time lucky

Jose Kurian-www.expressbuzz.com

POZHUTHANA: Marriages may still be getting ‘made’ in heaven, but there are many women who are brought down to earth with a thud by their ‘fancy-free’ husbands even before the embers of the wedding fervour die down.

The spouses of these abandoned women, of course, never view these ‘heavenly alliances’ with any degree of seriousness, much less as something sacred.

Strangely, many of these women expect their husbands to come back to them “at least in heaven” on account of their (the women’s) belief in the sanctity of marriages.

Years pass. The children grow up. And most of the women find themselves in the middle of a life stripped of everything you may associate with ‘wedded bliss’. Tormented by ailments, mental and physical, they find they have got little more than hope to live on.

“When my parents died, my brothers were too young to look after me,” Ramla tells ‘Express’. Her younger sister Shahila also was deserted by husband. “It was a horrific time,” she remembers.

“I toiled day and night just to make both ends meet,” she adds.

One day she was taken ill.

Abnormal uterine bleeding and related problems had been haunting her for years. Living in a rented room, today Ramla can’t even walk, let alone work.

Some of these women are married only for few years while for a majority it (‘marriage’, that is) lasted less than a year.

Most of the men left their wives soon after the first inconvenient signs of pregnancy.

Many have not even even seen their husband’s home. Usually, the man transplants himself to their bride’s home, enjoy the honeymoon at the cost of the woman’s parents and, when the thrill subsides, simply vanishes without so much as a triple thalaque — if that indeed is any consolation.

Zakkeena marries at the age of 15. She gives birth to a child at 16. Latheef, her husband from Tamil Nadu, visits her for one last time when she is barely into the fourth month of her pregnancy.

“I will not marry any more. Enough is enough,” she said. Zakkeena wants to educate son Shahul. Now a heart patient, she has already undergone a major surgery. “It is because of the kindness of the local people that I live on,” she adds.

In many cases, yielding to the pressure from family and relatives, the girls get married again, only to repeat the same sad story. There are even women who have married a third time but no husband to show for it “in the flesh”.

But not everybody is a loser.

There are touts always on the ready to supply ‘husbands’ for deserted girls and most parents are naturally eager to marry off their abandoned daughters. No matter how many times a girl is already married, there is always one ready to wed her; and each time the brokers get their share of commission from the dowry.

So there..