So you think your wife doesn’t torture
you? Think again!
“I tell you, it’s driving
me out of my mind, I often think of killing myself”. PHOTO: PINTEREST.
When I read about the man who has gone to the Council of Islamic
Ideology (CII) to deal with the matter of husbands being tortured and
thrown out of their houses by their wives, I burst into laughter.
How can men be tortured by their wives? In most countries, it’s
the women who are tortured, and in Pakistan, the torture is usually
accompanied by
rape and stripping women and making them walk on the streets
even when they have done
nothing wrong. Yet here is this man saying it’s the men who are being victimised
by women.
So I thought I’d look around
and see if there are any such men in my midst.
I was shocked by what I found.
While I couldn’t find any man
who was physically tortured by his wife, I found some who are subjected to
mental torture by their spouses.
Walking past the apartment of a
Customs Officer, I heard his wife yelling,
“I didn’t marry you to live
like a pauper, look at your colleagues who buy new cars every year, and who
take their wives and children twice a year to Europe. Why are you such a moron?”
The poor man tried his best to convince her that he was very
honest, didn’t take
bribes, and they would have to subsist on his meager salary. It didn’t
help. He yelped in pain as she threw something heavy at him. So there’s
physical as well as mental torture for you.
I asked another man working in
the private sector if he was being abused by his wife.
“Almost every day,” was his
response.
“I earn barely enough to keep body and soul together, and here
she is, splurging on clothes and whatnot. Yesterday I agreed
to her buying a
Rs15000 dress for an upcoming wedding, but she used my credit card to
buy a Rs50,000 one. I’m spending sleepless nights wondering how I’ll pay my
credit card bill”, the poor man concluded with tears in his eyes.
Then I asked my meat-seller if
he has any complaints against his wife.
“Like all men in my family, I too wanted to have 10 to 15
children, but I discovered that she takes birth
control pills, so I
only have two kids, and all my male relatives taunt me for it”. This, in my
opinion, is the height of mental cruelty.
The fourth man I met is quite
well-to-do, but he too thought his wife tortures him every minute of the day.
“We go abroad on vacation three
times a year”, he said,
“Yet she keeps complaining that I don’t spend anything on her.
She used to cook when we were poor, but now she has two cooks, so if one is
absent, the other will do the cooking. Not a day passes by that she doesn’t
throw a party at expensive restaurants for her friends, yet she tells everyone
that I’m a miser. I tell you, it’s driving me out of my mind, I often think of killing
myself”.
“Why don’t you take another
wife?” I asked, and what he said really shocked me.
“I signed
the marriage contract without
looking at it, and later I found that if I ask her to allow me to take another
wife, I have to divorce
her and pay
her a hundred million immediately. I’m not a politician, Sir; I don’t have that
much money”.
I wonder why the man went to the CII in the first place. That august
body has already declared the Women’s protection bill as un-Islamic, so
did he think they would respond favourably to his petition demanding protection
for men? It would be interesting to wait for the CII’s decision. But seeing
that they have accepted his petition to ponder upon it, will they ask the
government to pass a “Men’s protection bill?” to protect Pakistani men from
their highly aggressive wives who are making lives miserable for the poor
chaps? Let’s wait and see.
Until then, whether our Pakistani he-men admit it or not, most
of them are being “tortured” by
their wives!
Engineer, former visiting
lecturer at NED Engineering College, industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical
industries for many years. Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those
who know him), mentally unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
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