Seema Sirohi, the Washington correspondent for the ‘Ananda Bazaar Patrika’, chronicles stories of dowry deaths in India.

INTERVIEW A typical Dilli-walli in more ways than one, I’ve been a journalist for as long as I can remember. After graduating from St Stephen's College with English honours, I went to study journalism at the University of Kansas in the US.

I returned in the mid-80’s and joined the New Delhi bureau of the Associated Press, plunging straight into major stories of the day, including Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the Punjab militancy and the Bhopal gas leak. But what stayed in my mind, much after the dust had settled, were the many cases of dowry deaths by burning, poisoning and stories of countless women in domestic violence cases. Almost daily reports in the newspapers about this chilling crime touched a raw nerve in me.

What I remembered was that though these stories were splashed in every magazine or newspaper, a few months later, they would disappear from the national consciousness and were simply forgotten. There were few follow-ups on whether the woman survived the torture or if she received justice, and no write-ups on brides walking out of wedding ‘mandaps’, as recently happened in the case of Nisha Sharma.

A Mature Artiste
I moved to Washington and began covering foreign policy issues, another passion of mine. Travelling and working in the US for many years gave me greater confidence, and maturity as a journalist. Journalism as practised in the West is disciplined. There is more emphasis on attribution, accuracy and accountability. If you interview someone, you had better quote him correctly or there is hell to pay. No paraphrasing and simply putting quotation marks around a sentence. Of course, US journalists suffer from their own biases, as we all do to some extent. They often swallow the government line — as they so faithfully did, on the recent war against Iraq.

If you ask me what my motivation was to write ‘Sita’s Curse’, after so many years, I’d just say that when I came back to live in India four years ago, I was appalled by the near total absence of outrage against dowry deaths. It was as if the society had accepted this crime against women as something that just happens. The tales of torture and daylight murders of young brides were mostly buried on the inside pages. I felt there was a need to “refocus” attention on dowry deaths, specially because the number of deaths had been steadily increasing throughout the ‘90s when we in India were busy globalising and dreaming new dreams of prosperity.

The book’s title is synonymous with the mythological Sita, who even today represents an ideal for the Indian woman. While trying to be like Sita, women suffer all their lives, just as she suffered in exile and later in her “agni pariksha”, but never think of leaving the marriage. Unfortunately, we haven’t offered women real alternatives to the institution of marriage and the social conditioning is such that for most women, marriage is the ultimate goal. They are supposed to adjust to any and all difficulties that confront them, including physical or verbal abuse, torture for not getting enough dowry, and in many cases even death. Women are victimised because they can’t pay the high price for their safety in the husband’s home. But why should there be a price?

Justice Denied
There are more than 9,000 women killed in dowry-related crimes in India every year according to official statistics; thousands of others commit suicide or die accidental deaths. Despite stringent laws, justice is a distant dream for most victims. That’s because there is a backlash by the male establishment. So many lawyers and even judges that I spoke to while researching the book, openly said that women were “misusing’’ the anti-dowry laws to harass the husband’s family.

All six stories in the book are real, and I’ve interviewed victims, their families and their friends. I didn’t meet three of the victims because one had committed suicide (Tikka Preet), while the other two were burnt to death (Shashi Bala and Fatima), but I spoke to their parents.

Chapters Of Pain
Speaking to close family members, and asking them to recall the pain and trauma they had gone through wasn’t easy. One had to be both, sensitive and gently probing to draw them out. When they were reticent about information, I had to be patient and encouraging.

I’ve narrated each story simply, hoping that others who may be suffering, will know they’re not alone, and would be able to read the warning signs much earlier of such marriages going awry. The trauma of losing a daughter always remains with the parents as with Satyarani Chaddha whose story is the first one in the book. She fought a bitter battle in the courts of justice for more than 22 years and today, she helps dowry victims through her group Shaktishalini.

Or take the example of Maria Bai who is still waiting to send her daughter‘s murderer to jail. The story of Archana was probably the only one with a silver lining. After her traumatic marriage into the famed and influential Ambatti family in the US, where she was virtually enslaved, Archana came back to India, out of her hell, and is now pursuing a career as an advocate.

An Indian At Heart
Living essentially as a dual citizen — one Indian and the other American — hasn’t changed my sense of values, or my Indianness. But I do think that in India, women are somewhat “lesser” beings.

They are constantly being wished away from the time of conception to the time of marriage. In India, I think we bend too much, and tend to subsume our individuality. While in the US, the sense of giving each other space, including your husband and your children, having privacy, and a focus on individualism is very apparent.

Sometimes I find it hard bringing up my kids with the kind of values we grew up with — I’m married to an Italian-American —Christopher Sandrolini — and we have two children — because they are exposed to so many new things. But I also understand that I can’t impose my Indianness on them; they have to live in a different culture, and that’s how the scales tilt sometimes!
As told to Madhuri Velegar K

GOT COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? E-MAIL US AT femina@timesgroup.com WITH ‘author speak —’SITA’S CURSE, STORIES OF DOWRY VICTIMS’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE