The same story of the same face

There are many ways to kill a woman. Physical torture is only one of them. Frankly, a gaze may shame a woman to death; a rape may seal her doomed life; a social sensitivity may scar her forever. Women are one of the easiest commodities in the market of abuse. It is easy to trade a woman for money; it is easier to use her for gains; it is far easier to torture her when she is of no use anymore. It all becomes easier when our daughters turn into mothers. The shell of motherhood is toughened the minute it takes a shape and our daughters, like their mothers, protect their tiny marriage bubbles with all that they have.

We, as mothers have failed to teach the meaning of security to our children. We as sisters have failed to assure our siblings of the world that lies well beyond the murderous walls of our marriages.

It is time to look at our own selves with a fresh pair of eyes this time. The "ourselves" that I refer to lie well within our physical frames of bias, fear and insecurities. Our daughters are born in our womb, and yet are brought up to belong to others. There is an unspoken charter in our society that breeds insecurities pertaining to young women of marriageable age. "What? She has graduated and that too from a foreign institution? Omago…she is too matured and too independent for marriage at this point!" This is a regular statement that I hear about any feisty young lady whose parents are losing sleep over her marriage.

This is how we push our daughters to walk with emotional crutches all their lives. This is how we give birth to more Rumana-s in our lifetime.

Rumana Monzur is just another stamp of our failure and regret.

Rumana has been married to Hasan for the last 10 years and has claimed being tortured for many years. Apparently, she has hidden the incidences of abuse from her parents lest they get troubled over her woes. Truth is, it is impossible for any set of parents to have not known anything about her plight. Rumana must have shed tears at some point, she must have shown signs of distress to her family members in these long 10 years in some form or the other. Truth again is, most of the times, her close ones must have chosen to look away and ignore. I don't blame them and I certainly don't blame Rumana. Our society has been designed to castigate the "second sex".

Rumana is truly just another episode in the history of South Asia. Abuse is a common occurrence in a region where people worship female deities and revere motherhood. Women are subjected to honour killings in Pakistan, victim of feticide in India, trafficked in Nepal and forced into marriages in Afghanistan. The face of the Pakistani Mukhtaran Mai being raped by 14 men in Pakistan, the face of the Afghani 16-year-old Bibi Aisha with her ears and nose cut off, or the face of Bangladeshi Nurun Nahar being disfigured for life — are all the same.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation's legal news service wing has just reported that Afghanistan, Pakistan and India fall under the label of being the riskiest countries for women to live in (www.trust.org). Thank God for small favours. Bangladesh does not show up in that "top five" list.

We live in an area of contrasts. The impressive numbers of women leaders in this region put the West to shame. Yet, as per the UN Women, there is an incidence of violence every three minutes in South Asia. And more than half of the women in South Asia cannot read or write. The number of deliberate abortions in the region is alarming.

On the 11th of June, nine female foetuses were discovered dumped in a drain in India. On the 14th of June, Rumana Monzur was all over our newspapers. So was Rumana's father who filed a complaint on the 6th of June with Dhanmondi Police against his son-in-law, Hasan. For the most part of ten years, Hasan was abusive and finally he took a turn for the worst. The plot gradually climaxed with an unimaginable animosity with Hasan attempting to gouge her eyes out.

Who do we begin the blame game with? Hasan? Hadn't he shown signs of insanity through out their conjugal lives? Rumana's parents? Were they not aware of their daughter's unhappy marriage at all? Or Rumana who felt insecure enough to mask her abused life with shame?

Being born a woman in this region is synonymous with rejection. Till date. Being gifted and educated is a double jeopardy as most women and their capabilities threaten a male ego. Therefore, isolated stories of abuse will occasionally mar our morning cuppa and will continue to haunt us enough for us to take to streets, stage demonstrations calling for justice.

Question is, as women, for how long shall we continue to frame our cases in a society where we have grown up believing that the we are the cheapest item in the neighbourhood and that we can be traded for free? Question is, for how long shall we shelter our fears and subject our daughters to rape and death?

When shall we wake up to our new realities that don't cushion failing marriages? At the current pace? Maybe never.

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Rubana Huq is Managing Director, Mohammadi Group and CEO TV Southasia.