Hello everyone, I am not a writer. I am just a simple girl, a simple, independent and full of freedom working woman. I live in foreign from many years. Since I was about 21 years old, I started living away from my family and started facing the reality of life. I had no boyfriend and no affairs because I used to think that these things are not for me. I got married 4 years back, and it’s an arranged marriage. My husband is from a small town, but he is cooperative. He is a very nice person and never stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. He has two sisters and a father, his mother died many years ago.
Because of this everyone tries to control him a lot, espectially elder sister. She would brainwash my husband a lot and we would end up fighting.
We got married in Canada. At first, no one attended our wedding because we were in foreign but after some time, we went to India and got married again as per the cultural tradition. I was very close to my father-in-law as well and would talk to him a lot, everyday 4 to 5 hours about pretty much everything. But after cultural marriage, everything has changed. When I went to India two years after our registered marriage, I went alone. Without my husband, no one from my in-laws’ family came to visit me even once, except my father-in-law. I went with my mum for wedding shopping and my in-laws came along, my sister-in-law didn’t even talk to me. She completely refused to talk to me because she wanted to behave like “nanands” (groom’s sisters) do. Even though she didn’t talk to me, I wanted to talk to her, but for me, my principal says “give respect, take respect”. I don’t believe in nanand bhabhi drama, I believe in equality. Maybe because I live abroad, my mindset is different. Any way, I ignored it. My husband would also listen to them at that stage, but I never even cared what he would say about it because I always put forth my perspective in front of him.
The purpose of my life is not just to impress his sister.
On my wedding, my husband’s sister told the photographer that she didn’t want any photo with me. Everyone noticed her behaviour but they told me to ignore it and I did but deep inside I was hurt. After that, when I went to my husband’s house, the whole family asked me to say sorry to my sister-in-law and I don’t even know why. I did as told and invited her to my in-laws’ house. I invited her happily, though not from the inside, I fulfilled my duty as a daughter-in-law of that house. But as usual, she insulted me and I felt really bad because someone was talking ill of me only after three days of the wedding. I warned my husband that if he couldn’t stand for me then I would divorce him. I cannot be expected to apologise to someone simply for my existence! She then came to our home to apologise and I told her clearly that as she doesn’t respect me, I am not interested in patching up.
This time, my husband also supported me.
He went back to Canada then, and I stayed back for some time in India. My father-in-law was good to me during this while but when my husband came back to India to take me, his father again asked him to apologise to his sister. When he said he won’t say sorry, his father stopped talking to us. It has been one and a half year since, and he still does not talk to us. I tried to call him so many times but he never responds. All he wants from us is to live without our self-respect and always be ready to say sorry to his daughters. It does not matter whether it is our mistake or not.