BETA

Provoked - A true story

I’m sure most of you have at least heard of this movie, if not have watched it already. Even if you do not know of the story behind this touching movie, most of you will at least know that Aishwarya Rai plays the leading lady.
For weeks I had seen the advert for this movie on Tamil TV wanting to watch it, with little knowledge of the story line apart from it was based on a true story of a young British Indian woman who was subject to domestic violence.
Finally I took Amma to watch it. And what an experience it was for me personally.
To give you a brief overview of the movie, it is a snap shot into the life of Kirinjit Aluwhalia, a young lady from India who marries a British Indian man. She leaves her family behind in India and moves to the UK with her husband. For the next ten years she is tortured by the man she trusted and believed would take care of her, and who others said would give her a better life. She gets battered and bruised for calling her husband at work, her face is nearly burnt with an iron for ‘wasting’ money on food for the family, when Kirinjit tries to stop her husband from going to see one of his many lovers; she gets pushed down the stairs. She falls down a full flight of stairs carrying her 6-7 month old baby inside her. When she is crying in pain at the foot of the stairs, her husband rushes down and utters the infamous words ‘why do you make me do all this?’ and ‘you know I love so much that’s why I get mad when you do this to me!’
Finally Kirinjit explodes, after ten years of being battered and bruised, of being subject to emotional and physical abuse, of being raped by her own husband she explodes. She mixes some oils together, lights a candle and enters their bedroom where her drunken husband lies sleeping. She pours the oils over his feet, when he suddenly awakes with a start, kicking the candle out of her hands and over his oil doused feet, setting himself alight. She gets arrested and charged with murder. She spends just over three years in prison where she claims to be ‘free’.
As the story proceeded I was becoming more and more disturbed as this was not just a movie to me, this is my close friends life. But thankfully my friend has not killed her husband.

My friends story..

As a young woman it breaks my heart to see people getting away with treating women in this manner. I doubt many would treat their old, worn out shoes in this way! Domestic violence exists in the world! Many women and even men are put though hell at home by their husbands or by their mother-in-laws. Some even by closer family members such as siblings and parents.
My friend is from an average family in Sri Lanka. She lost her mother when she was only fourteen years old. Since then she was treated like a slave in her house by her aunties and cousins, doing the cooking and cleaning for them. She was hardly bought any new clothes to wear through her teen years.
As she grew older her cousin brothers began to sexually abuse her. (In the middle of all this she still managed to get a good degree.) When Nanthini reported the abuse to her family, they did not believe her. They beat her and admitted her in a mental hospital. As in their eyes they believed her to be crazy.
They then found her a maapillai here in the UK and forced her marry him. She was constantly told that this man has given her a new ‘life’ and that she must be forever grateful to him. He bought her here, and for the first year or so of their marriage things were great for her. He was very loving towards her, took care of her and she was finally beginning to enjoy life.

The happiness was short lived. Things were fine until she fell pregnant. Things took a turn for the worse for Nanthini. Her husband’s behaviour towards her became very abusive. It all began with verbal abuse and ended up being constant physical abuse. After the birth of their baby, things got worse as Nanthini’s attention diverted a little from her husband to her son. Her husband became more and more jealous of this and abused her more and more. He would shout at her over little things, hit her, try to strangle her, threw hot oil over her back.. the list is endless.
When she first told me of this, I was so shocked. She hid it well. She was always smiling and very sweet. She is a kind natured girl with so much love to give.
She tells me the main reason she is scared to leave him is because of our society, and the fact that she does not want her child to grow up without a father.  She is afraid of how she will be looked at in the eyes of our judgmental society. She is afraid of the name it will give her family in Sri Lanka if she were to leave him in search of a safer life.

Our ignorant society..

Our society will not accept her if she were to leave her abusive husband and raise her child by herself. A single mother in a Tamil society, leading a fairly ‘normal’ life is virtually unheard of. It angers me that this society we live in will not be sympathetic towards people’s personal circumstances. We are far too judgemental. If not sympathetic, at least if they would just let her be with her child, she would have some hope. But we know this is a far fetched dream. We live in a world that is only too eager to frown upon those who do not fit the ‘normal Tamil family’ bill. Society will look down on her for leaving him, she will the gossip of the town.
Many people only gossip about others because they are in denial about the happenings in their own homes. They put others down to make them feel better about themselves. But as the saying goes ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, and words will ALWAYS hurt me..’. I know I have changed it slightly to give it a whole new meaning. But this is what many people live by.
Including my Nanthini. So she continues to put up with this behaviour from that monster. I wish that she was not so concerned with what others think of her. But she is. And due to this she will not leave him. She feels ashamed of what is happening inside her house. She feels that she may hold some responsibility in her husband’s behaviour. It is hard to convince her otherwise.

I have tried my best to be there for her as much as I can. But I am lost. I do not know to what I can do in short of me physically taking her away from the monster that is her husband. But I know that is not for me to decide. It is a decision that Nanthini must make herself. Until that day comes, I will be waiting by her side…

If you know anyone who is subject to domestic violence or are the victim of it you can get advise and help from the following websites and contact numbers:

www.shelter.org.uk , Free housing advice helpline number - 0808 800 4444

www.refuge.org.uk , Free phone 24 hour national domestic violence helpline -0808 200 0247

www.imkaan.org.uk , this is a network of Asian women’s refuges – 020 7434 9945

www.southallblacksisters.org.uk , 020 8571 9595

These are just a few of the many organisations that are set up to help victims of domestic violence in the UK.

Domestic violence is a crime! Don’t suffer in silence..