TW: Domestic Violence
“My parents never accepted me because I was a girl, so I was raised by Nana & Nani. Then at 17, when they passed away, I found a job as an office assistant & started living on my own. But what I truly longed for was a family.
Then 4 years later, my landlord introduced me to her brother & kept saying, ‘Settle down.’ But when they discovered that I had no family, his parents were hesitant. Yet, he stood by me. A few months later, we got married. My uncle fulfilled all my in-laws’ demands—gold, jewelry, gifts. It was overwhelming.
20 days into the marriage, he raised his hand on me. I thought, ‘What have I done?’ Still, I tried to make the marriage work. When he said, ‘Take care of my parents,’ I did. When he asked me to contribute to the house loan, I did. But nothing was enough. Once, when I refused to sign a document, they starved me, locked me up, punched me, and hit me with slippers. I went to work with a black eye. When I told my relatives, they said, ‘Have children.’
I thought that was the solution. So in 2017, I gave birth to Naira. My mother-in-law said, ‘Girls aren’t good.’ She even remarked, ‘You should be grateful my son still pays for her diapers.’ Almost 30 years later, history was repeating itself. Pretty soon, even my husband began to resent her.
But the last straw for me was when in 2019, my husband raised his hand on me while Naira was in my arms. I couldn’t continue, so I filed an FIR. Though they weren’t arrested, I received police protection and was relocated to my hometown.
There life 2.0 began. I rented a flat and found a job. Naira and I found joy in small things—making art, going to the park, and recording dance videos. The family I’d always yearned for? I finally found it in her.
She’s 8 today. And slowly, I’ve started telling her about our past. I wasn’t sure of how she’d take it, but she handled it better than I imagined. Once, her teacher handed me her essay titled, ‘Why I Want to Save Money,’ and she’d written, ‘I want to buy a big mansion so my mother can rest and live in it.’ And you know, I believe she’ll do it. And in Naira, I see what I always believed in—a daughter is not a burden, but a blessing.”

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