India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation (21 page)

I ask her what she means exactly. She spreads out her hands in front of her and explains: ‘Today, women are increasingly allowed to work. But their husbands still want them to be the usual housewives. It’s impossible to have the two extremes. My generation – those women aged from thirty to forty-five, say – find themselves in a transition period. They are not able to live in the old systems or values, yet they can’t obtain their new demands either.’

‘And is that your own experience?’ I ask hesitantly, conscious that my question crosses the fine line between the professional and the personal.

She looks at me with a considered gaze. Her professional instinct, I sense, is telling her to terminate the conversation here. She doesn’t. At least, not explicitly. Instead, she turns back to her computer. She has an affidavit that needs finishing. I interpret this as an adjournment rather than a dismissal, and decide to wait.

‘My case is one of many cases,’ she says, pressing ‘send’ and swinging her chair back to face me. ‘I am separated. He deserted me.’

I had been warned before arriving in Kolkata that I would be lucky to find anyone willing to discuss their own divorce. As a conversation topic, it’s up there with herpes or bankruptcy: not something to be broached in public, especially between strangers.

Evidently a rare exception, Mrs Gutgutia spends the next thirty minutes describing the breakdown of her marriage in great detail. It hadn’t been her idea to get married in the first place, she states upfront. She was content building a career and a reputation for herself as a trial lawyer. Her parents pressured her into it. They said it was a good thing to marry, so she thought she should experience it. Tensions soon arose though. Her husband didn’t like the fact she continued working. He wanted control over her life, she says. ‘In his mind, I’m not equal to him.’ It’s all bound up in
his ego, she thinks. That makes him jealous. Her theory is that deep down he resents the fact that she is more successful than him.

Then there’s the small matter of S.E.X. She spells out the word letter by letter in preference to verbalising it. She hints at an incompatibility. He is more indirect. He’s accusing her of having an ‘illicit relationship’. It’s a lie, she says. An attempt to bolster his case in court.

The comment brings her on to the legal wrangling between the two of them. Clause 13B of the Hindu Marriage Act is the easiest way to obtain an annulment in India. Divorce through mutual consent. She’d prefer it that way. As a lawyer, she knows how nasty and time-consuming litigation can be. He objects. His reasons, she says, are irrational. From her perspective, it comes down to his ego again. He’d rather carry on fighting than give the appearance of having lost. She calls him a ‘frustrated personality’. He won’t let her live in peace. Nor will he accept the judge’s suggestion for counselling. She tried that route before. They had three sessions with the court-appointed counsellor. Her estranged husband didn’t turn up to any. All of which leaves her marital status in legal limbo.

The focus of their legal battle is now over maintenance. That brings Mrs Gutgutia round to talking about her four-year-old daughter. Her voice contains a mixture of tenderness and steely determination. Her husband is trying to turn the little girl’s mind against her, accusing her of being a bad mother. And then she checks herself. She has gone further than she intended. She lets the matter trail off.

The conversation drifts back to the realm of the impersonal. I ask about other cases she has dealt with. She tells about the husband who tricked his illiterate wife to unknowingly thumbprint her own divorce papers. Another man forced his wife into kinky sex against her wishes. Not all her clients have been women. She once represented a man whose wife had eloped with her lover, taking all the papers for their house and investments with her.

A number of the stories are coloured by domestic violence. Wife-beating is not uncommon in modern India. A third of adult
women under fifty have experienced spousal abuse, according to official figures. In Bihar, the figure climbs to three-fifths. Not that such violence automatically translates into divorce proceedings. Most incidents are never reported. More than half of women believe men are justified in beating the missus from time to time, the same government survey finds.

In cases where domestic violence is cited as the cause for divorce, it is not always possible to determine if the factor comprises the whole truth. To obtain a divorce in India, the woman (or man) needs to prove ‘torture’. The term is used in its broadest sense, encompassing not just physical abuse but social, religious, mental and emotional harm as well. So, as in Mrs Gutgutia’s case, being told last-minute that thirty people are coming for dinner and could she ‘quickly rustle something’ up could be considered torture. Modest though the requirements are, the tendency to juice matters up for the court must be tempting.

I return to the court after lunch and the following day. In no special hurry, I stroll the courtyard and fall into conversation with some of the idling barristers. One of the kipper-tie club, a young lawyer with a wispy beard and a gravy stain along his lapel, offers me an animated briefing on the differences between English and Indian divorce law. Another also finds it incumbent on him to deliver me a second short lecture, this time on the specifics of ‘rule nisi’. (‘Special Marriage Act, 1954, Article 28, Section 13. Look it up.’)

A third is more relaxed. He sits stroking his belly, a post-lunch coffee sitting on the shaded bench beside him. High child maintenance, that’s what it boils down to, he ruminates. He has evidently given the matter considerable thought. Not out of a sense of social justice, it should be said. His own interests are at stake. Many married Indian women are not financially independent. They depend on their husbands for money. Given that they can’t be expected to go to their spouse and request cash for divorce proceedings, covering their legal fees presents a difficulty. In such instances, the barristers often settle on a no-win-no-fee deal.
Lose and they come out empty-handed. Win, and they get a cut of whatever child allowance they have eked out of the judge.

Back in the first-floor courts, I sit in on a succession of hearings. The proceedings are doused in drowsiness. The court’s somnolent eyelids collectively droop in the mid-afternoon heat. Even the spiders look comatose. The judge is forever calling recesses. During one of these, I find the door to the court counsellor’s room open. Inside, an elderly lady sits behind one of three large desks transcribing notes into a ledger. Against the wall beside her stands a tall filing deposit made from rusted bars. It is three quarters full, piled high with a jumble of discarded case folders. I leave at the close of the afternoon sessions, the pages of my notebook gloomy with the ink of litigants’ complaints: overbearing in-laws, alcoholism, financial stress, dowry harassment, sterility, miserliness and just plain unhappiness.

By the end of the second day, my enthusiasm as a court reporter is beginning to wear thin. The family court is not a happy place to be. It’s as if the acrimony of countless couples has seeped into the brickwork, filling the building’s very pores with hate and ill feeling. The atmosphere of bitterness and ennui, more pressing by far than the waterlogged air, is beginning to darken my mood. I move on before it squashes me completely.

I am reluctant to leave Kolkata before confirming one nagging question. Marriages fall apart for all sorts of reasons. Violent husbands or querulous mother-in-laws are not new to India. Such factors alone cannot explain the leap in divorce rates. Of all the reasons I’d heard, only one had the ring of a genuinely new phenomenon: namely, the rise in career women. The emergence of professional women leads to inevitable tensions in traditional family roles. Yet female high-flyers such as Mrs Gutgutia remain the minority in contemporary India, as they did in the corridors of the family court. It was women from everyday walks of life who I’d come across there: homemakers and hairdressers, full-time mothers and part-time teachers. No, there must be some other driver at play.

Mrs Gutgutia had hinted at something else. Back in her office,
she had talked of a change in attitude among younger women. ‘Less patience,’ was how she’d put it. Before, women trapped in an unhappy marriage would suffer in silence. Now a brave few are saying ‘enough’. They want out.

It certainly sounds feasible. I wonder if it could be true.

To corroborate, I decide to ask some marriage counsellors. If anyone knows what is driving women to divorce, it should be those in whom they confide. There’s only one problem. Other than the court-appointed mediator, there aren’t any. Well, that’s not strictly true. An afternoon spent hitting the Internet and phone directories turns up a dozen or so names. Once I take out the clinicians in psychiatric units, I’m down to four. Not many for a city of over sixteen million people. One permanently engaged phone line and one email bounce-back reduces my shortlist further. The following day, I set out to the southern suburbs of Kolkata to meet the remaining two.

The Association for Social Health in India is a well-meaning NGO located down a winding back street in the Bansdroni district of town. It operates out of a large, tumbledown house with a scruffy yard. A caretaker opens the gate to me and ushers me towards an office area at the front of the house. There I find a kindly gaggle of elderly women seated around a table. They offer me tea and biscuits and explain the goals of the Association. These focus mostly on providing assistance to women and girls in difficulty. I’m handed a promotional leaflet. It enumerates a host of services, ranging from the offer of temporary shelter to the promise of ‘family enrichment’. Marriage counselling falls into the latter bracket.

The director takes me through to the back of the Association building to meet with the counsellor. On the way, we pop our heads into a tailoring workshop. Fifteen teenage girls in matching white saris scramble to their feet. ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ they chant in unison. The director smiles and tells them to get back to what they were doing, which consists of some basic needlework. The Association runs a home for distressed girls, she explains. These are their current crop of residents. Some are the victims of
sexual abuse. Some orphans. Some too poor to marry. Some the subjects of prostitution. The marriage prospects for all are dim. Hence, the sewing lessons. Tailoring is a means of future upkeep.

The director pushes open the door to the counsellor’s room, introduces me to Mrs Mukherjee and promptly leaves.

Mrs Mukherjee is a motherly lady in an orange sari and colour-coordinated fringe. She is busy with clients, a married couple with worry lines etched around exhausted eyes. They sit in two straight-backed chairs looking fraught. The woman seems to be on the verge of tears. The object of all the tension is lying with his feet in the air under the counsellor’s chair. Then he’s up on the desk pulling at her stationery. Then he’s back again on the floor, doing circuits of the room on his knees. Seven-year-old Antarish cannot sit still. Nor will he stop shouting ‘Baba, Baba’. A slogan on his yellow T-shirt reads ‘Stand Out’. He is at least accurately attired.

The beleaguered couple leaves with the name of a specialist for attention-deficit disorders and advice regarding various foreign-sounding medications.

Mrs Mukherjee turns and invites me to take one of the recently unoccupied seats in front of her. She was informed of my visit and is ready with her answers.

‘We deal with all types of people. Anyone with marital adjustment problems,’ she explains, anticipating my first question before I’ve even voiced it. ‘Most are referred to us from the courts, but the police, protection officers and other local authorities send cases too. Some couples come of their own accord, but not many.’

The chief difficulty, she reveals, is persuading the couples to talk. Men are especially reluctant to open up. Often the women come alone. While their husbands won’t speak because of pride or privacy, their wives’ reluctance stems from fear. Marital problems are supposed to be resolved within the family (which, it strikes me, explains the shortage of independent counsellors). Women worry that by voicing their dilemmas to others, their future shelter and economic security will be put in jeopardy. Many ask for their
comments not to be documented. The request guarantees privacy, but effectively rules out legal action too.

Not all are so reticent. A number of female clients ask for legal support to pursue a divorce. For the Association, it’s a last resort. Mrs Mukherjee repeats the line about marriage being an institution and reiterates the Association’s desire to help couples patch things up.

‘Many just don’t have the patience nowadays,’ she concedes, her shoulders hunching in a way that suggests it is a battle that she is resigned to losing.

‘Why have things changed, do you think?’

She shrugs. And then she sighs, a long and tired sigh of resigned acquiescence.

‘Formerly there was an attitude of making adjustments. Couples would take more time to work things through. Today, attitudes are shifting. There’s no time to think about these issues. If something is nagging at a couple, rather than fix it they just say, “Okay, better to separate.” Like that.’

As a good counsellor, Mrs Mukherjee tries to see it from her clients’ perspective. She may be pro-marriage, but can appreciate why some women are not. Family life requires compromise, she admits. Yet there must be room for individuality too. I nod. The right of the individual seems commonsensical to me. In India, however, the notion remains up for grabs. Family trumps everything, even – or, perhaps, especially – the personal interests of its members.

‘Yet why now?’ I press. ‘What’s happened to make opinions change?’

She shrugs again. It’s a convoluted story, she says, suddenly looking dog-tired. With another heavy sigh, the experienced counsellor talks of how globalisation and ‘computers and all’ are leading to a greater exposure to the wider world. She mentions the education of women. She speaks of the confidence that comes from self-reliance. All are causes for celebration, she insists. ‘But . . .’ Her explanation trails off.