Horns of Dilemma

Two paths and only one option is really a difficult situation especially when both paths look very dark.
She is in this situation.

She is educated and is married to a person who is to all purposes illiterate. The decision to make her marry him was taken by the elders of the family without really looking into the details. Her husband is an alcoholic and all that she earns is taken by him and his parents. They live in a village where social pressure is much more than it is in cities. In cities people can merge into its anonymity. To some extent there is freedom there which is not found in villages. Hers is a miserable existence. She has no father and her mother works elsewhere for her living. Once, she had come back to her mother but had been persuaded to go back. She did, praying for a better life, but it was not to be. This time she went to her friend, her mother was desperate when she could not contact her initially. Now the mother and daughter have gone to her maternal uncles’ place and they will decide what to do.

The girl has told her mother if she really loves her, she will not make her go back, it would be better to give her poison. Social pressure has placed the mother in a great dilemma. If her daughter goes back she will be miserable all her life and she might even be driven to take her life. On the other hand if she gets a divorce , the mother is worried about what people would say. The blame would definitely be on the girl.

I wonder what will happen.

It is the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century and nothing has really changed.

But, even as I write this ,I am reminded of my father’s elder sister. She passed away in 1991. She had been married at the age of sixteen. She was encouraged by her husband to study, she completed her BA and MA, was a gold medalist, became a Professor of Political Science and went on to do her PhD.

There is light.


“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”
― Brigham Young

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Very true, Shyamala.