I think nothing would surprise me, and I pretend to be jaded but life usually springs back with something that leaves me awestruck and dumbfounded and, I kid you not this is not an exaggeration. Someone somewhere educated their daughter in the finest of schools and then gave her the best Ivy League education in the world, she went to the finest. and, then as all Punjabis do, they married their daughter off with all the grandiose, pomp, show and flamboyance that is associated with us. Everything pointed to a big fat wedding and it was the talk of the town.

All went off well, the family was congratulated for getting a great match and the couple went for their honeymoon to an exotic place. All was well, and when the married couple came back, the groom just said oh I don’t like her anymore, she doesn’t appeal to me and I can’t live with her anymore. It was crazy, baffled both sides. He then said she has a pimple, and its skin disease and she will give it to me. She was even asked to stand outside in the sun.

To further the torture, she went to dermatologists in Chandigarh, PGI and Delhi which just said that she is suffering from your common acne and she didn’t have any skin infection.

It went on for a couple of months and she and her parents were harassed. You will ask, why do the parents allow this, because of society Kay kahegi, and the fact that one just wants adjustment, compromise, and 90 per cent of you reading this will say something must be wrong with the girl.

We all profess to be advanced and modern and progressive, but again and again, parents of the girl are tried and tested and have to prove the worth of their daughter either in cash or kind or in this bizarre case by giving medical certificates to prove she is fine.

How easy it is for a man to say that she doesn’t appeal to me? Is she a book that one returns her to the library? Is her worth negligible that she can be dismissed and returned just because she doesn’t appeal? What did he mean?

Forever these questions will haunt her, what must be going in her mind? I am saddened and hurt for her that one keeps on proving herself. When does this end?

All of our lives, it’s a constant battle, and in the end, when you think all culminates a stupid random statement starts it all again. Have you ever asked or told a man that sorry I can’t be married to you because you have acne? Men can be anything, he just has to be a man, but we have to prove day in and day out.

Does it ever end?

The trial separation ended and the divorce came through. The humiliation, the stress, mental anguish and trauma continued for the family as people would never believe that it’s just the pimple that was to be blamed. All sorts of stories come up and it forever remains a blot. The society is merciless in its gossip-mongering and scathing comments.

 I don’t know what to say, words don’t even come close to the anger, sadness, frustration and the disgust I feel. It’s a good thing we are headed to doomsday when the state of affairs is pathetic. The eyewash of saving the environment, the water level is all a sham, its just better to end. Ridiculing your wife over a stupid pimple, making her stand in the sun and then she trying to patch up by giving medical statements to prove her worth. Just not done.

In a couple of months, we worship the Devis to ask for boons for wealth, education, prosperity, but we shun her when she had a mere pimple?

And this is not a figment of my imagination.