Adultery Indian Social Worker and the Bully by shiprat

[Ramesh_Rocky]

"So you see my point?" I asked.

"Yes, memsaab." Parvati nodded earnestly.

"The only way forward is for you to file a security officer complaint, make him take his punishment as the law decides, and then we can help you leave him and divorce him."

"Divorce????" she sounded shocked.

"If you care about your daughters, that's the only way. So...are you ready to press charges? I know all the cops in that security officer station. They will help you. And we can also help you a lot."

"I don't know, memsaab...divorce seems so extreme!"

But I pressed on. I used all the persuasive skills at my disposal, all the things I had learnt in my training, everything I knew from my five years of experience in this job, to talk Parvati into acting on her own survival instincts. Finally, I seemed to have broken through.

An hour later, I was on the phone with Inspector Dubey who had referred her case to me. Parvati, I noted with a sense of accomplishment, was pressing charges against her abusive husband. As long as she testified, he would be sent away for a couple of years, and she could get a divorce as well as sole custody of her kids. Then another division of our NGO would help her resettle in another city so if her husband decided to get vengeful after getting out of jail, he couldn't torment her more. I closed the file from my side.

I felt cautiously optimistic about this case. Part of this job was regular disappointment. An odd kind of reverse recidivism where women we convinced still changed their minds and went back to their battered lives despite having the option to escape. Whenever that happened, I felt sad and defeated.

Years of this had taken a toll on me, and my husband Anup had seen it from close quarters. He saw me go from a perky and idealistic aspiring social worker at 22 when we started dating, to a slightly hardened postgrad during my internships at 25 when I got married, to an often morose and cynical veteran now at 30. Anup often tried to convince me to quit the job and do something less stressful and depressing. I resisted, knowing that what I was doing made a difference. But as the years passed, it was getting harder and harder to resist his suggestions.

So when Anup's company decided to send him to the US on an onsite assignment with the possibility of a green card, I decided to change my career tracks too. I took the GRE and starting sending applications to doctoral programs in social psychology. With a good score and a hefty experience in social work on the frontlines, I was optimistic that I would soon enter the world of academia and leave this soul-sapping job behind.

I was counting the months.

I saw Parvati again a month later. She walked into my office looking considerably more cheerful and entirely free of bruises. She was accompanied by a short wiry man. Maybe her brother, I presumed.

"Namaste, Shikha memsaab." Parvati said, and was echoed by the man in a flat voice.

"Namaste." I smiled at her and looked at the man questioningly.

"Memsaab, this is Lallan, my husband."

What the hell? I thought this case was closed and the guy would be in jail by now. The inspector as well as the prosecutor had assured me that it was an open and shut case as long as Parvati didn't recant.

"Oh umm... namaste!" I said, not sure of what to say now that this woman had brought her tormentor along. I couldn't very well ask her in front of him about what happened with the security officer complaint. And why the man was here in my office with her. "Please sit down."

"Memsaab, we have come to thank you. Because of your advice, our marriage is now on the mend. Lallan has given up drinking, gotten a job, and things are really great like they used to be." she said, beaming and putting her hand on her husband's.