When Neerja’s husband told her — If you can’t cook, stop eating

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 3

Known for her heroism on board Pan Am Flight 73 that was hijacked in the September of 1986, senior purser Neerja Bhanot had another sadder aspect of life. She suffered domestic abuse in her short-lived marriage.

On the brighter side, Neerja rejected violence and chose separation from her husband with her family standing by her side. They refused to send their daughter back to the “horror house” and ensured Neerja blazed a trail in 1980s – a trail of saying no to abuse.

A new book on her life reveals the scale of abuse she suffered in marriage. Within days of tying the knot, Neerja was braving a range of taunts. Her husband would tell her to stop eating if she could not cook, quit modelling to keep the marriage, mind her manners and be quiet.

“Some things never change. Domestic violence was a reality then. It is a reality now. The key is how families respond when their daughters are in crisis. Our family responded with zero tolerance to Neerja’s suffering. She was never returning to that horror house in Sharjah,” says Aneesh Bhanot, Neerja’s brother who has narrated her struggles in the book, “The Smile of Courage”.

The book reproduces a heartbreaking letter Neerja’s husband wrote to her within months of the union. Dated September 16, 1985, it says, “Right from the first day I am unhappy with you. You have been of no use to me. You could not give me simple food. Even a poor man gives something to his daughter on her marriage. You are just a graduate. Your modeling success … I don’t regard that as an achievement.”

Another handwritten note by Neerja to her father Harish Bhanot spoke of the conditions her husband had listed for the marriage to last.

“Take charge of the house, cooking has to be done whether you work or not; you have to be quiet and well behaved; a wife has to accept the husband as he is; modelling and fashion shows are unacceptable but you can work as a computer programmer; you have to forget your father’s home. If you don’t accept these conditions, we will separate,” it said.

Neerja Bhanot had got married in March 1985 and in two months she was back in Bombay where her father was then posted. To her parents’ shock, she had faced starvation in her matrimonial home and had lost 5 kg.

“She did not even have the money to phone her family back in India,” states the book that reproduces evidence of dowry demands on the 22-year-old.

The book, however, gives a strong message to families whose wards endure violence.

It contains a strong letter Harish Bhanot wrote to his son-in-law on December 9, 1985, telling him the importance of a wife and clarifying that Neerja was not returning.

“Every word in your letter speaks of dowry. Your idea of a wife as a whole-time unpaid servant has not existed in our family…Under your care, a young girl lost 5 kg weight and you demand that we should have remained mute spectators to her suffering and should have allowed her to die of starvation in a foreign land, and let her bear torture and be another dowry victim? She has no intentions of returning to your horror house,” Harish Bhanot replied to her daughter’s tormentor, who would keep cursing Neerja for bringing bad luck upon him.

The girl who ended her abusive marriage went on to die saving lives of passengers aboard the ill-fated Pan Am flight hijacked on September 7, 1986. She had been so very lucky for the survivors.