Today, I have to go and visit my in-laws house. My son, who is 11, got ready to go with me. The kachcha roads here do not invite an easy means of transport, and so, both of us walked.
In this story, a caseworker walks us through her Sunday, that day of the week when she takes her son to visit her husband’s village. What awaits her there are the probing questions of neighbours as well as the calming presence of her best friend – a Mahua tree.
Kya Hai Yeh Samjhauta works with material of the everyday, scraps of cloth, needle thread and the timbre of human voices (“The voices of the caseworkers animate the dolls, and is the documentary part of this,”) to explore these questions. The scraps of cloth in turn, animate the grain of the voices, to gesture at the many choices women make when faced with domestic violence.
The easiest thing to tell a woman in a violent marriage is to just leave. But is leaving always that simple? From financial vulnerabilities to a loss of kinships, to a turbulent clash of hope and fear, to a complex interplay of love and desire, the decision to not leave are also stories that need to be heard.
What are the bargains we make, the samjhautas we strike, the deals we despair in, to feel safe, to feel loved? In this story, a caseworker from Bundelkhand takes us through the many rooms she has lived in, and asks, which room is mine?
The easiest thing to tell a woman in a violent marriage is to just leave. But is leaving always that simple? From financial vulnerabilities to hopes, desires, dreams, fears and responsibilities, all collide in the decision to not leave and stay.
News around us tells us that the brokering of deals over the untimely deaths of women is not rare. It is as common as the crime itself. The nature of such monetary saudas exposes the reality of our most personal relationships – as being hollow, fragile and dispensable.
What does it mean to counsel a woman while centring her needs? At the time of taking a decision, a woman finds herself caught in a complex web of social expectations that she progressively frees herself from. Many questions stand in the way of making a decision: Where will I live after separating from my in-laws? What will I do?
When people talk about striking a deal, what I remember are the innumerable deaths of women. This is because when a woman is alive, society brokers a deal over her dowry and when she is dead, the deal is over her body.
The easiest thing to tell a woman in a violent marriage is to just leave. But is leaving always that simple? From financial vulnerabilities to a loss of kinships, to a turbulent clash of hope and fear, to a complex interplay of love and desire, the decision to not leave and stay in a violent marriage is not simple.
