Free yet weighed down

I sold out.
I had to choose between justice and freedom.
I chose freedom.

You would think I would be elated. Absolutely ecstatic. To find freedom from the man and the family that made our lives miserable. 

I want to…but how often can one find joy in defeat.

Today is their day of celebration. And here I raise a toast to them and to our system for their success. Yet another woman has been defeated just as I am sure every other woman who stood in our courtrooms hoping for justice.

We used to make fun of Sunny Deol’s famous “taariq pe taariq me lord”. Turns out the joke was on me, cause that’s what the courts give you. A date for another date for another date. If only these dates were a pleasant affair. Am I making an excuse for having buckled…no absolutely not. I take full responsibility for being held at ransom and pushed against the wall to allow every demand even as the infidels ordered me to teach my child religion.

Justice, you see doesn’t exist. It didn’t exist the day there was a breach of the marriage contract; there wasn’t any on the day my life fell apart, nor on the days that our family was threatened and abused, nor on the days, as I struggled to stay afloat. And it wouldn’t have been there on the day that the court would have passed judgment, maybe six months from now or possibly three years later, had I chosen to battle on. Top divorce lawyers in Bangalore have clarified for me that visitation is the right of the father even according to the Supreme Court, even if the man is eccentric, which I am told is a nicer way to describe insane.

I may choose to lug it out and probably at the end of it, I may get back what I have lost financially. But really does that count? Does that make up for the years of agony that we have been put through? Or the seed of mistrust that has been sown into every cell of my body? Or that my son will never get what he most deserved—a decent childhood? Will that make up for the number of hours I have spent away from my child in the courtrooms and come back dejected, physically and emotionally exhausted? Justice I repeat does not exist.

I, thus, gave in.
I sold out.

And so I cheer for them today. Their victory stands for everything that is wrong with the system. People without integrity speak of religion, the perpetrators become victims and scoundrels become martyrs.

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