At 38, Nighat Jan comes across as a pallid person — whose haggard face betrays her age, and persona. It’s hard to believe that the young mother was a cheerful person only a decade back, dreaming and singing her maiden’s heart out. But when sorrows stormed her life, she first surrendered her will to the destiny, then to her parent’s choice, and finally to her children’s welfare.
But before the bad times would even begin, Nighat was being brought up as a beloved daughter in her parent’s home in Handwara. Her shyness, simplicity and sober nature set her apart from her peers.
And one day when the love came knocking at her door, she was drawn into a different direction.
“It was a sweet surprise for me to fall in love,” Nighat says, lifting the gloom of her room with cherished memories. “The guy was pious, who made our love beyond lust and loitering. In eight years of our relationship, we met only around 12 times.”
In those days, mobile phones were yet to connect masses. “So,” Nighat continues, amid sighs, “he would sometimes call on our Landline to enquire about me.”
Everything was going smooth, until some hard realities popped up in that “spiritual bond”.
“When he finally sent a marriage proposal to my family, it was out-rightly rejected because he was an ex-militant,” Nighat says, with a deepening sense of despondency.
What happened next took a huge toll on her, but made her warrior of sorts as well.
It was early 2000, and not many were ready to accept former insurgents as their son-in-laws. Much of the reluctance—especially in countrified Kashmir— came from the common pattern of how the former gunmen had to mark their presence before army on every Sunday. “And especially they would be called without any prior notice, if any untoward incident would happen on 15th August or 26th January,” says Nighat’s cousin, sitting beside her. “So we were paranoid of her safety, and future.”
But then, for the sake of her love, Nighat put up a fight, despite facing regular humiliation, beating and curbs on outings.
“During those days,” Nighat continues, while occasionally breaking into a child-like smile over reminiscence, “I had maintained my diary and would pen down each moment related to him in it.”
Years later, as her family finally agreed in the face of her mad devotion, Nighat ran to her room, cried her heart out, before informing her beloved.
She recalls that phone call—where both of them were crying, consoling and cheering each other—as the most cherished moment of her life. Among other things, Nighat had told him that day: ‘I knew my family would agree one day because you’re the most pious person in our locality.’
But while comforting her, he didn’t tell her that he would regularly pray and give charity in way of Allah, to make their union possible. It was only later that Nighat learned all this from a well-wisher.
Soon as Nikkah was offered, Rukhsati was supposed to be held next year.
But just a month before her marriage, she got a life-changing phone. Nighat pens down that moment in her diary:
This day is the most tragic day in my life. I was feeling sad since morning, despite preparations of marriage going on at home. At 11:00 am, my beloved called me. We talked for some time. He hung up saying he would call back at 02:30 pm. But when my phone rang up at 12:30pm, I thought it was him. But no, it my beloved’s sister, crying bitterly. She said, ‘Baya has met an accident.’ I was shell-shocked. I began to move here and there like a mad…
Her fiancé had slipped into coma due to the accident. But a few days later, the guy whom she calls “Jaanu” in her diary, left the world and the love of his life—Nighat.
Once done with dirges, she wrote obituary of her lost love in her diary:
After hearing about his death, all dreams were shattered. With his funeral left the funeral of our love, our dreams and our bond. He left me all alone in this crowded world.
As his departure turned her dismal, she apparently lost the meaning of life, and became ‘Zinda Lash’—living corpse, as per her diary. Many a times, she even attempted suicide, forcing her mother to stay around her, like a shadow.
“That phase was terrible,” Nighat recalls. “I was on anti-depressants.”
She spent some five years in that wretched state, before finally agreeing to marry a government employee from Baramulla, on her parent’s insistence.
Her marriage, however, proved to be another painful saga, because of her ‘vicious’ in-laws, and ‘indifferent’ husband.
“Since he was elder to her, so we thought he would love and care her,” Nighat’s cousin chips in. “Everyone spoke high of him, when we went to do the mandatory marriage background-check. We were even told that he looks after Masjid affairs and is affiliated to a local religious organization. We were happy for her.”
But the guy’s religious mask soon came off, when he and his family started taunting Nighat ‘for not bringing anything’ with her. They shortly turned offensive over dowry demand.
“His family had strictly told my parents not to send anything, but I still gifted some jewellery and clothes to his family,” Nighat says, recalling her torment like an oppressed soul. “So when he asked me to handover my jewellery, I was shocked. I told him I cannot give, as it was bought after my father sold a piece of land.”
Her refusal went on to open floodgates of abuse for her.
Away from her parent’s home where sh
e was raised like a princess, Nighat was now living a torturous life. Her husband stopped providing for her, while her mother-in-law and sister-in-law would always pick holes in her work to torment her.
Almost immediately, as her family came to know about her abusive marriage, they started playing pacifist. But it didn’t help. Instead they came to know about her husband’s earlier marriage with a woman—who had divorced him, a week after their wedding, due to his family’s torturous ways.
But Nighat’s case was a proverbial: Once bitten, twice smitten. She braved violence, while hoping for the better days.
Today after the five years of her onerous marriage, those ‘better days’ are yet to dawn.
Now as a mother of two children, she’s living another day with her father’s monetary assistance, while her husband continues to stay indifferent. “He didn’t even spend a single penny on her delivery cases,” Nighat’s cousin says.
Her mother-in-law had even beaten Nighat’s husband in the hospital ward for supposedly bearing her delivery expenses, which he had not, the cousin continues.
“After that,” Nighat breaks in, “my family seriously thought of divorce. But then, my children who need their father stopped all of us.” It, however, never stopped the abuse.
And therefore, the dreamer who once fought for her love like a warrior had to make an uneasy peace with a life full of taunts, humiliation, abuses and violence.
“One day when I was into 7th month of my second pregnancy, my husband kicked me hard for not ‘working properly’,” Nighat says, sounding wretched on earth. “Once done with beating, he would tell me: ‘Don’t you ever forget that I’ve married you just for work and sex!’ Those words would simply kill me.”
One can confirm the authenticity of what Nighat alleges by the fact that she gave birth to a child who died soon. Doctors had remarked that the mother was not cared at all.
“It’s because of my children I’m tolerating all this,” Nighat, welling up, says. “Had they not been there, I would’ve jumped in River Jhelum from Baramulla’s Cement Bridge.”
Domestic violence is one of the main instigating factors behind growing suicide rates in Kashmir. From a last decade, the hospital records say, 5370 cases of self poisoning mainly involving young women have been reported in Kashmir. Most of these suicide cases are being attributed to a minor argument at home. But in many cases, the fact-finding exercise holds a household monster called domestic violence responsible for such desperate moves.
But while Nighat isn’t mulling any such dastardly step, she often wonders about her husband’s double standards. He treats his mother well, but abuses his wife. The very act goes against the religious edict that makes it compulsory for a husband to treat his wife well.
To help her out, even Nighat’s neighbor tried to intervene. But he soon realized that he was banging his head with a rock. He then approached to the head of the religious body, with whom her husband is affiliated.
“I do not think they even bring it up,” Nighat says. “Otherwise, I would’ve either received fresh beating for complaining, or he would’ve repented it.”
Thing is, her cousin says, the religious body can’t take action against a member who “collects donations for them”.
Amid this indifference, Nighat has become an object of abuse, and a body of multiple ailments, including Thyroid, Anemia, Depression, etc.
“I married for the happiness of my parents,” she says, taking a long haunting look at the darkest corner of her room. “And now, I’m suffering marital abuse for the welfare of my children.”
Omer Farooq
