Sometimes I Wonder If My Marriage Is Just Another TV Saga Or Real Horror Happening To Me!

Trigger warning: This deals with domestic abuse, and traumatic childbirth with the loss of the infant, and may be triggering for survivors.

Have you seen TV serials like Naagin (season 1-6), Sasuraal Simar Ka etc, where the stories have such twists that we always have to take step back and think, “Does that happen in real life?” “How do these people write such stories, what inspires them?”

Well I have always asked this question to myself whenever I saw those ads on TV (can’t really watch the whole episodes, too depressing).

This January I was pregnant (8 months). In those months my husband hadn’t attended any of the scans, hadn’t discussed with me about the baby even once, and any time I tried to talk to him about the baby, he just shut me up.

Just like every foolish, misguided married Indian woman, I kept believing that after the baby came things would get better. But as time passed, my health deteriorated, and my BP kept rising.

A story of trauma and loss

Then I found that my husband had been sleeping with his friend’s wife and that this woman’s 3-year old daughter might be his biological daughter. That broke me. That day I lost the trust I had in that b****rd, and that stress and hypertension pushed me into further depression. My BP rose, and I was admitted into hospital.

Unfortunately,  the doctors were only able to save my life.

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My husband and his family was informed by my parents in the morning that I had been admitted to the hospital, but they didn’t come there until the night. I was lying on the hospital bed hoping for a normal delivery, waiting for the pain to subside as a contraction hit me. At that point, my husband came there with his mom, even as his sisters were on the phone instructing him to leave as soon as possible.

I raised my hands towards him; I needed him at that time, but he and his mom started abusing me and my parents. I was rushed to the operation theatre where doctor tried to normally deliver the baby, but after trying for 2 hours my baby was still stuck. The doctor came out to ask my husband to sign the papers to perform a caesarean to deliver the baby, but he had already left. My parents agreed to sign the papers, but apparently that was not enough. So I had to sign the papers with a half delivered baby (half was still in me).

Well the story doesn’t end there, the doctor said that my husband and his mother had left saying that “this relationship is over,” and had abused the doctor as well. My baby boy came into this world dead. My doctor asked me to see him once, and he looked just like me.

Then came the next news, we were asked to take the baby for his last rites immediately. I was in the ICU as my BP was still pretty high, my mother had fainted and was lying in a hospital bed, and my father had to take care of all of that all alone.

That day has been full of horror and pain for me, the most terrible day of my whole existence, and every second of that day is etched in my memory.

To everyone out there who is reading this, I don’t want your pity or sympathy, but I will really request you to share this with any woman in similar circumstances you know, and support them so that it doesn’t come to this. I am a working woman, financially self-sufficient, but I kept suffering for 5 years and it didn’t just destroy my life, but my son’s too. I knew my rights, but just like every Indian woman I tried to keep it together.

Now back to the question I asked at the beginning, after seeing all this for so long, I feel that those writers may have seen more, and those stories might have been inspired from real events.

Image source: a still from Marathi film 15th August

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