“If any reader has undergone more cruelty than this, s/he is requested to share his / her story in the comment section.”

He was initially not comfortable sharing his story with me. He thought only he has this unique story that no one else should know. But he realized that I am the one who probably knows hundreds of such stories and counting and still no one’s secrets are out. People trust me for that quality.

His name is not important. Let’s call him “Babumashai” because he is a Bengali who lived outside Bengal for a long time and many of his friends call him by that name at times. No one would have known what is hidden within this seemingly soft-spoken guy unless I tried to peep through his heart.

-“If I had told others, people would have thought that I am impotent. So I kept quiet”. He said.

• but you should have told the world instead. Everyone should know about these leeches.

-Ya..so I am telling you. Please keep my name confidential…

I smiled, I made it clear that the story will be public, but without names. His identity will be protected on legal grounds.
His story goes like this. An intelligent student passed out from premier Engineering College in the country. They were poor so sold his mother’s jewellery for his studies. He was not a reserved category student so didn’t get help from anywhere but that is a different story altogether.

He was always taught to work hard, excel in everything so that he can earn a lot of money. His parents wanted a sweet and charming wife for him and so they have found for him. After all in the marriage market still today brides are selected based on their beauty, grooms are selected based on their earning ability.

The relation was through newspaper matrimonial column. She was completing her graduation and her parents wanted to get her married. He was working outside Bengal.

His mother selected some photographs and sent to him. Because the girl was beautiful, it was love at first sight for him. Her parents wanted him to come and meet them in Kolkata during pujas but he was scheduled to visit Kolkata only in December. He didn’t budge to their pressure, but didn’t hear first warning signs as well – “The Demanding mother-in-law”.

He also didn’t notice another few powerful warning signs that he should have noticed before his marriage – “Extremely powerful Father-in-Law”, “Gap in the social status of these two families” and “Gap in the economic status of these two families”. I have noticed these gaps while I went through his case.

Their marriage was a perfect marriage for the first few months. She was very caring and loving with him. He felt he was blessed in his life. He proudly told his colleagues that he has got the best wife in his life. But the happiness didn’t last for long.

He started noticing his wife on long calls after six months of their marriage. It was a guy on the other side. Very often even after his coming back from office, his wife would continue these calls. Initially, it was in the evenings, then timing shifted to late nights. This was also coupled with frequent SMSs. Initially, he didn’t notice, then he tried to ignore, then he tried to divert his attention forcefully, then he tried to keep her engaged in different things / distract during those calls and then he asked the question.

I noticed that he was a typical henpecked husband who was not willing to accept the reality or afraid of his all-powerful FIL. He simply wanted to close his eyes to run away from reality. But sooner or later he had to face it.

He got the first shock when their landline bill came over 3000 rupees. The first time his wife blamed it on the internet and faulty billing. It continued the next month with a bill of over 5000 rupees. A check with landline provider that also provided internet connection for them didn’t yield any result, and the third month he was bombarded with a bill of 7000 rupees. He would have immediately disconnected but she has managed him…with those sweet cuddling words.

Slowly he started coming out of his initial phases of love and started facing reality. By this time she started receiving SMS even in the middle of the night, in those private moments and even worse she used to reply to those SMSs even in those private moments.

“I didn’t know what to do. I knew it was that guy but whenever I asked she said some girl’s name. She had so many friends. Initially, I trusted her, later I started thinking she was fooling me”..he said in a hardly audible voice. Probably he was feeling ashamed of the shameful acts of his wife. Men have this tendency of feeling guilty always. Even if they are not at fault.

All these were lewd, sexually explicit messages. The name mentioned was ‘Bochu’ in her contacts. It could be a girl or a boy too. He had to believe in her explanation. He closed his eyes thinking girls do circulate those lewd SMSs among themselves. He tried to convince himself in vain.

Gradually his wife became abusive to him, abusive towards his parents who had never even lived with them. She found fault with everything his family ever did and so were her parents. They used to call him and abuse over the phone, show how his parents were useless fellows. He didn’t know how to tackle this.

He thought she might be feeling lonely in a faraway city and hence decided to move to her city close to her parents.
They took a rented apartment in Kolkata and thought they would be happy there. The girl got a job in that city thanks to her father’s connections. He was happy that at least she would be busy and hoped that she would forget the other guy.

“I did everything to keep her happy. I always believed in women’s freedom. I used to share all household work, kept housemaids, took her to places, made plans for every weekend. I tried everything I could do for her. But nothing was enough. She wanted more. I took her to places in India and she started comparing how her other sisters go abroad on vacation. How they buy those expensive cars frequently.

They were very greedy Partho.” – He added.

All his efforts could not appease her or her family members. They gradually became crueller to him. Her abuses continued, she started denying sex and turned him into a ‘vegetative state’. He has been turned into a living corpse. He kept his hope alive as he thought she will change one day.

That day never came for him. The year they moved to Kolkata went out for a vacation in a nearby hill station. One day when his wife went into the bathroom to take bath there, he found two SMSs coming to her mobile. He opened the SMSs and was shocked – his wife wanted that guy to take her away. That guy didn’t want the ‘responsibility’; he showed various reasons why they should continue ‘like this’.

“You can imagine my vacation was not at all nice”. “I broke from inside. I didn’t know what to do. I confronted her but she said he might have sent those SMSs by mistake. I made her make a phone call to that guy asking him to stay away from her life. She did exactly what I said”

“What was the outcome” – I was hearing him in shock.

“She said, he wanted to send the SMS to his girlfriend. It came to my number by mistake.”

“and you believed her.,”I asked.

‘No, not really. But I didn’t have anything to do. Every time I catch her, she used to tell me a new story. I was fed up”.

I understood how much cruelty he has undergone all these years. He could never undo the very first mistake he made by marrying outside his social status, and by going by the beauty of the bride.

He threatened to tell her parents about her behaviour but she pleaded with him not to do so as her father might get a heart attack. He gave her yet another chance. She promised to stay away from the guy. But as soon as they went back to Kolkata her behaviour continued. She continued to be on long calls, receive and send SMS late night and even worse told him directly one night that she doesn’t want to be the mother of his child.

“She denied all kind of physical relationship with me. One night she agreed, but after our relation, she shouted that I raped her. I didn’t know what to do. There was no help for me, I couldn’t tell anyone about this. I felt like committing suicide, Partho”…..he started crying.

Somehow my eyes also moistened now.

He continued – “I was not getting sleep at night. This was continuing for more than six months ever since we went to Kolkata. One side I was under tremendous pressure from my office, another side my wife was cheating on me. Lying always. I was determined to teach her a lesson. One night after 2 am, I woke up took her phone and transferred all her SMS to my mobile. I knew she would delete all her SMS and claim that there is nothing, so I had to do this. Then I woke her up and asked about those lewd SMSs.”

What happened as a result of this was another nightmare for him. She woke up, immediately deleted all SMS and started shouting – “Help, Help…he is beating me”. She quickly undressed and wanted to go out of the house crying for help…He was shellshocked. He had no option but to keep mum and appease her for the rest of the night so that she doesn’t go out and create a scene in the middle of the night.

He didn’t want to give up that easily. He could tell all these stories to anyone on his side so he decided to take that matter to her parents the next day. He had great faith in her father as he always seemed to be a gentleman.

What happened in the discussion was utterly shocking to him. She completely denied any SMS and instead alleged that he wanted to beat her and throw her out of the house in the middle of the night. Her parents were all set to beat him and started alleging that HE was the one ruining the life of their daughter. They claimed he needed medical attention and psychologist help as he was claiming completely fictitious things.

Our guy was smart enough to show the SMSs he has transferred previous night but her father didn’t even look at them. He accused the guy of grafting stories and advised him to seek psychiatrist help instead.

He didn’t know where to go. Even though he was an IT guy, he never took help of internet to find out if help was available to him. This is where most men in India miss out. They don’t reach out to anyone for help and commit suicide instead.

He continued his broken relationship without knowing how this would end. One day he decided to come home early without informing anyone about it. He told lies to his wife for the first time that day, that he would be late.

He knocked their main door of the two BHK, 500 SFT flat for 15 minutes before his wife opened the door. She was in her nighties. She wanted him to go to a room while she locks him from outside, as she said she needed to do something…

He became suspicious immediately. He went around the flat only to find a man hiding in their balcony.

“I broke from inside completely. This is the wife for whom I have been doing everything all these years. Partho I lost all my energy. How will you feel when your nearest one cheats you Partho”…He broke down in front of me…I felt very sorry for him as if this was happening to me.

“I didn’t feel revengeful, I felt completely lost. Very weak from inside. Didn’t know what I would do.“

“Don’t cry..” I told him in a feeble voice. I was not convinced to even myself.

“I somehow held that man in my house and called her parents. I wanted them to see what their daughter was doing. He fought with me, my wife joined him and both broke my face, I started bleeding. But I didn’t let him go, I called her parents immediately to my house”

“Did they come?”

“Yes, they came with another person, their family friend. But they all started blaming me instead. That I have tried to fight with her guest and was unnecessarily cruel to them. In fact, they told me that they are not going to the police because of my career and life and warned me of future consequences. They offered me to go to the police if I wanted. They wanted to come with me too. You understand my situation then, her father was very powerful in that area. He is a very good friend of local CPM MP, her father was very well connected with ministers, local leaders, police officers and local goondas. What could I do Partho?”.

No, even after this nothing happened. The female leech continued to stay with the henpecked man, this IIT graduate devoid of any help was pushing himself towards suicide every day. He didn’t have the intelligence to go to a doctor and get a prescription and treated, he didn’t have guts to file any case. He still thought “Everything will be alright, soon”. His good-wishers said they needed a child so that she forgets everything and become NORMAL.

After two years of the above incident, this couple had a child. It was surprising to the man as they never had a physical relationship after the incident. She denied most of the time but he started avoiding too. Every time he felt he was sleeping with a prostitute leech. So at the time of the childbirth, he became sceptical but couldn’t tell anyone. Gradually he started loving the child and forgot about his grievances.

Suddenly one fine day he found out the password of his wife’s social networking site. Both used to use the same laptop and luckily enough she used the same password for her email as well.

When the pandora’s box of his wife’s illicit affair came to light, when he went through how she had been cheating him all these years, he decided to fight back and started searching the web for help. Then he came across help from completely unknown people.

“My own friends, our family friends with whom we used to have late-night parties didn’t believe me when I told them about her misdeed. They took her side instead. Everyone was enjoying the story rather than listening to my pains.”

“That is why you have turned yourself into anti-feminist?”

“Yes, I have been suffering all these years and still with all proofs of her cruelty, she is granted maintenance. Now she wants my property too. I want to fight back, if needed, with the society.”

“You know Partho, I have DNA proof that the child is not mine, but still I was asked to pay maintenance. Court didn’t even look at my evidence while passing the order”.

This is the order of the day. This kind of cruelty is not new to the men in our society today. It is time for Indian men to speak up, speak up early in their lives to save themselves and to punish the criminals.

Dear reader – As a human being, if you have undergone even greater cruelty for years, you are requested to share your experience and let the world know.