Is your husband a wife-beater?

[Ranga_The_Donga]

If all women who were asked this question were to answer honestly, you’ll realise that many marriages are made in hell. Poor Dimpy Ganguly found out the painful way when Rahul Mahajan, the man, she fought a dozen girls off for in a reality show, began abusing her shortly after marriage. Physical abuse in marriages is a sad reality in urban India too. Even the rich are faced with this issue and they too do nothing to fight it.

You think you know the guy, but the monster is revealed only after you get hitched. After all would you ever expect an Indian diplomat, whose job is to broker peace, to use his wife as a punching bag?

Sunanda Prabhakar, Chairperson of a domestic violence counselling centre in Bangalore, says, “I receive about 20 cases of domestic violence (from across the state) daily. Ten are from Bengaluru alone. Around 50 per cent of the cases are from the middle class, 25 per cent from the upper economic strata of the society and 25 per cent from the lower middle class.”

Cutting across socio-economic divides, even beyond the ‘battered woman’ syndrome, the absence of financial independence or parental support, having children, fearing the stigma all become reasons for a woman to stay put.