The worm turns…

Atif sahib never had the courage to stand up to his wife. There was a time during their disastrous marriage when he even contemplated suicide. After one of their usual quarrels, he kissed their two children on their heads and quietly climbed up on the roof from where he would have jumped, too, had he not been spotted by his father-in-law. The older gentleman first forcibly pulled him away from the edge and then calmed him down by having a long talk with him. Though the marriage remained on rocky ground throughout, Atif sahib never tried killing himself again. However, he never stopped being a yes man for his wife Tehmina Aunty who had no respect for him.

The entire family joked about the couple. There were graphic images stuck in the heads of family members of Aunty running after Uncle with a shoe in hand. Some claimed he even wet his pants when she called out his name. So it was really a surprise for many when after 46 years of marriage, Atif sahib at the ripe age of 74 decided to have an affair and that, too, with a younger woman. Then the family members joked: “Atif Uncle has grown feathers in his old age, and what colourful feathers!” they laughed.

The affair started when Aunty was on vacation somewhere abroad and the couple’s own two children had long ago flown the coop. The fondness between Uncle and his girlfriend grew to such heights that she decided to do what he could never have done himself. She packed up all of Aunty’s belongings that she didn’t like and placed them in the garage. On Aunty’s return those were just handed to her with the request to leave. “Call Atif at once,” Aunty screamed from outside and when he appeared, all he did was point to his girlfriend and say, “Jaan, I listen to her now. And so should you.” The unhappy couple are now separated.

The disappearing act

Muneeb had always been a difficult person to get along with, which is why his mother always encouraged him to find a match for himself. “I don’t want to knowingly push some unsuspecting girl into marrying my son because if it doesn’t work out, he would blame me and so would she,” the mother would say.

And then he met and married Uzma. The couple were seemingly leading a happy life in Dubai with their two-year-old daughter. Muneeb still remembers that day when he left for office one morning as his wife and toddler waved goodbye from their front door. “Tata!” they said in chorus.

And he returned to bare walls. Their apartment was completely empty, stripped of each and every article There was no furniture, no dishes or utensils in the kitchen. Even his clothes were gone from the closets along with his wife and kid. Even the money from their joint bank accounts was gone. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his briefcase along with its contents. SOS signals to his home finally resulted in his sister taking the next flight to Dubai to provide him some relief money-wise. The runaway bride later filed for a formal divorce.

Meet the out-laws

Another story of a broken home is of Beenish, who didn’t have as much of a problem with her husband as she had with her two sisters-in-law. “One was divorced and the other separated and both women took out all their frustrations on me. The problem was that my husband, their younger brother, respected them too much, which is what eventually destroyed our marriage,” she says.

“No decision in the house would be taken without their consent and they vetoed anything and everything I wanted. If I switched on the lights, they switched them off. If opened a window they shut it. If I wanted to eat something, they didn’t so the menu was also decided keeping their choices in mind. Even my dowry was first checked out by them and they kept whatever they liked from my stuff. I realised soon enough that this couldn’t go on so filed for khula. That meant forfeiting my haq meher but fine as long as I got each and every item of my dowry back. They were sent notices again and again and failing to do the needful I had to get everything back through a police raid at the house. Even the police women were surprised to see me get under beds to find my slippers, etc. I would rather give them to charity than leave anything with those people,” she fumes.

*All names changed to protect privacy