My Bari Ammi (maternal grandmother) is over 90 years old. I was sitting with her today and she started telling me about the early years of her marriage. She was born and raised in Jallundhar - in a big house with 5-6 rooms. As a pampered younger child she never had to...
...take on much domestic labor. Things changed when she was married at a young age and moved to a village near Nankana Sahib (which would go on to become part of Pakistan). Used to living in comfort in a city, she felt utterly miserable in her new home...
...where she now lived with a really mean mother in law and had to take on the bulk of domestic work. "You know those storerooms where you stored paittian [huge steel storage containers]... I would go in there and cry." Her sisters already lived in areas that would become...
... part of Pakistan at Partition. But her brother had to move from Jallundhar with his parents at Partition. He went back a few times in the following years and reported back that their house was still standing, even though other houses in the...
... neighborhood had been razed and new structures built on the land. But Bari Ammi never saw her house after she got married. Now all her siblings her dead, "main akeli hi reh gai hun" she said with a chuckle...
... she then circled back to her parents in law. Her father in law was a doctor and was always nice to her, which was a relief since her mother in law wasn't...
... what struck me most about this story was how after all these years she is still somewhat traumatized by the distress of the early years of her marriage. Lately, I have been thinking about how the practice of patrilocality is so inherently misogynistic,so inherently violent...
... and so COMPLETELY normalized in this part of the world. It is not an issue of mean individuals. The issue is the practice in itself that is based on the acquisition of women who are expected to move into someone else's house and fit into the existing family...
... like a single piece of furniture that you acquire and make it fit with the rest of the room instead of altering the room to fit with the new furniture. And the violence I am talking about is not the spectacular violence of beatings & threats which most people would condemn...
...I am talking about the everyday, ordinary acts of violence and humiliation that don't even register as violence. For example - and these are actual things that have happened to people I know - needing the MIL's permission before going out; MIL throwing a fit because...
... the bahu slept in; MIL expecting the bahu to accompany her on all/most social visits; a bahu needing her MIL's permission before buying a piece of furniture with her own money for her own room; MIL's refusing to let bahu hire help; curfews; minor and major taunts, insults...
... none of this registers as violence. Because when you sign a nikhanamma you are expected to surrender a part of your dignity and self respect. And even today you are the bad guy if you suggest that there needs to be some degree of separation - at the very least the...
married couple should live on a separate floor/separate unit within the same house b/c its not fair to the woman - the structure of patrilocality is inherently misogynistic & subjects women to routine humiliations.
So this really blew up. That's why I just wanted to clarify that the issue is not that of mean/nice individuals. You can have the best in laws and patrilocality is still problematic. That's b/c all adults have the right to live their life on their own terms, run their home in...
...their own way. And that's logically not possible if there is no degree of separation or independence.
Also since this blew up: PLEASE GET VACCINATED ASAP!!
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