Amidst lockdown, the families have been cooped up in the sheds for days and months now – they eat, drink, loiter around between their four concrete walls while being apprehensive about what looms ahead in the subsequent time. There has been a surge in “Cabin Fever” – a feeling of being bottled-up in a place for longer time, in the people due to social isolation.
Being inactive has been an extreme deterrent to the psychological well-being of both young and elderly members of the family. In India, a country where patriarchy is deeply rampant and on top of that, women incessantly trying to please their men – it becomes a crowning accomplishment for them to find ways to abuse women. When the tension outside goes up – violence on women and children goes up.
The lockdown acts as a fuel for their inherent impulse to control or take command of the house in duties they know or not know of. The people prone to the abuses are those who have men in their families with an affinity towards alcohol. Since, alcohol shops had been barred from opening by the government in respect of the lockdown, men started developing symptoms of alcohol withdrawal – anxiety, lethargy, intolerance, peevishness and many other unsavoury issues.
The increased violence is not just the result of the frustration due to physical confinement, and alcoholic-deprivation but the global slowdown, massive economic dislocation, closed businesses, the threat of looming unemployment, often accompanied by the threat of hunger and poverty for what seems to be an indefinite future.
Hence, what more can one find easier than raising their hands on their counterpart at a time when one’s probably feeling powerless against this virus and the situation it has all put us in. Sigh! Violence acts as a balm or an ointment for their scars caused by frustration. Shame!
Calls to the helplines have seen a drastic spike within these days since the start of the lockdown. According to an article published in THE HINDU website, 315 complaints of domestic violence were received by the National Commission for Women (NCW) in the month of April. One of the startling complaints was that a woman was threatened by her in-laws to throw her out if she coughed.
Again, a girl was dreadfully beaten up by her parents and forced her to consent on marrying the man of their choice. Another was of a woman beaten up by her in-laws and had nowhere else to move during the lockdown. The statistics are quite alarming and it’s a ticking bomb in already abused homes. The abused have been made to share the same roof with the abusers owing to the lockdown.
The lockdown – a mass effort to save lives across the world – have put one vulnerable group at risk. It’s so important for women, therefore, to have access to money in their hands, even on a regular basis and not just merely in times of these pandemics. To be able to manage and control their own money provides them with the strength to face any hurdles with utmost resilience. Even women from extremely affluent families who don’t have access to money have limited exposure in their own homes.
Abuse is not something which happens to one particular class or society but can be with everyone belonging to the societal ladder. Many a times in the well off homes, women are discouraged to work only because the husbands fear that it will make the women independent and so will lose control over them – the easiest way to subjugate the women with.
Alongside, it’s utmost essential to pay our household helps, such as, our cooks, maids, the nannies who have been forced by their husbands to work – abuse them physically if they don’t earn enough for them. Best is if one can find a way to provide them with cash in this time of crisis. However, one with an abusive nature abuses the other even with or without money. But since money provides practicality, it ensures the freedom one desires away from the abusive lot.
It happens a lot when we hear fights or abuses and we turn a deaf ear thinking it to be their personal matter and not intending to be nosy on it. That might actually be putting someone at risk. Many even derive sadistic pleasure from witnessing others in pain. It’s utmost important to keep our eyes and ears open for someone who might be getting abused around us.
At this point, I can recall an incident by one of friends who told me about a woman who had worked at her house and one fine morning showed up with bruises in her hands. Upon asked she started cooking up stories and pretending as if nothing had happened.
Eventually, when my friend started reiterating and asking multiple questions to her, she got so irked that she decided to leave the work. Unbelievable, isn’t it? She almost decided to quit because the ignominy of having people know took precedence over the violence or the abuse she had gone through. This is the case of every household and the primary reason for the women to bear the atrocities meted out on them throughout their lives.
Since, mental harassment or torture, too, is a part of domestic violence, hence, I reiterate that domestic violence should never be gender specific – both men and women are susceptible to it. Being locked up with an abusive wife who leaves no stone unturned in creating furore in the house, getting intimidated and intrigued by every trivial mistakes, can equally be as dreadful as the woman being with an abusive man. Hence, should never be neglected in the larger spectrum of the society.
There are many other shades of abuse or violence too, alongside the predominant ones, which are so subtle to be raised and paid attention to, yet are equally draining. The demands of the men cooped up in the house have touched the stars – in every 10 minutes they crave for food or something else and their demands have to be fulfilled with utmost sincerity and dedication.
As a result, household labour has overwhelmingly gone up for women. One of the people was heard saying, “The lockdown is serving me good because I get chai, pakora almost every couple of hours” to his friends.
Moreover, what scares me to think is that if a woman shows any symptoms of Coronavirus or even has a seasonal flu, she is more prone to face violence by her family members, since there’s a taboo around it of being a life-long illness.
Rituparna Ghosh, a queer feminist activist said, “For queer people, home is often not the most comfortable place. They find freedom when they are outside. With the lockdown they are trapped inside.” This, she said, results in ‘mental violence’.
Domestic violence is a menace and a curse on the sensibility and rationality of a society. While penning down my thoughts on this crucial topic, I’m reminded of the recent released hindi movie, Thappad, which triggers on the sore nerve of the patriarchal mind-set – the ‘first slap’ of a man to a woman and the root that gets embedded for many more slaps throughout her life if not addressed in the very first time.
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