Readyreckoner for harried NRI wives

Lives on the Brink: Bridging the Chasm between Two Great Nations, India and United States.
Anu Peshawaria Diamond Pocket Books Rs 250.Pages 216
Nonika Singh

Harrowed NRI wives and their battered lives have often made us sit up and take notice of their plight. But when a lawyer Anu Peshawaria, based in the US, picks up her pen to dovetail their predicament, the experience is not only revealing but also educative.

Not only does she bring us face to face with the unenviable state of many NRI women caught in foreign lands but also shows the way out. Expectedly, coming from a lawyer, she does offer legal recourse and methods that are available to women in such a predicament. She also proffers simple common sense advice too, to both parents and wannabe brides. Warning signals or the signs that newly wedded brides must consider alarming are listed out in the very beginning. One sign she insists brides must be both wary and chary of is the failure of husband to turn up at the airport to receive the wife. Why she even goes to the extent of suggesting that the wife better take a flight back home there and then.

Of course, Peshawaria is all in favour of those who stay back to fight their battle, especially concerning the custody of children. Rather she calls for and demands laws that allow women a legal status till the custody battle is over. In the final analysis, she stresses on why India must sign the Hague Convention on the civil aspects of child abduction for this would ensure the return of children to India where they would have a home.

While a large part of the book does deal with legal provisions already available and those which must be made mandatory, still Peshawaria builds up her case in a story-telling format.

Right from the very first chapter one learns of cases like this Punjabi woman desperate enough to circumvent the law to bring her sister to the United States, only to lose both her husband and her sister. Similar hair-raising tales of other women caught in loveless marriages are woven into the book the prime purpose of which is to warn and make people aware. ‘Beware’ is the thread that runs in the book all along as many cases of domestic violence in foreign shores are laid bare.

No doubt domestic violence is a reality in India too but as Peshawaria time and again reminds readers that far away in alien environments domestic violence can acquire many chilling dimensions. The desolation of the rejected or housebound wives misused and abused as domestic help is not the same as in their own home country where family support and social norms save many a married woman. Once the married life of a woman is marred courtesy an uncaring NRI spouse, where she can go and seek help is listed in the book.

In the concluding chapter, the names of the organisations along with their website addresses can come in handy to all those women who have nowhere to go. In fact, the book is a good and valuable guide to parents as well as NRI brides on how lives on the brink can be saved.

The only point of lament with regard to the book, however, is the poor quality of editing. Both spelling and grammatical errors run across the pages right from the foreword written by Kiran Bedi, the former IPS officer, who happens to be Peshawaria’s sister. Nevertheless, the solutions that Peshawaria, who founded India Vision Foundation and SevA Legal Aid to help scores of vulnerable women, are worthy of consideration both at the micro and the macro level.

HOME