So you think your wife doesn’t torture you? Think again!

When I read about the man who has gone to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) to deal with the matter of husbands being tortured and thrown out of their houses by their wives, I burst into laughter.

How can men be tortured by their wives? In most countries, it’s the women who are tortured, and in Pakistan, the torture is usually accompanied by rape and stripping women and making them walk on the streets even when they have done nothing wrong. Yet here is this man saying it’s the men who are being victimised by women.

So I thought I’d look around and see if there are any such men in my midst.

I was shocked by what I found.

While I couldn’t find any man who was physically tortured by his wife, I found some who are subjected to mental torture by their spouses.

Walking past the apartment of a Customs Officer, I heard his wife yelling,

“I didn’t marry you to live like a pauper, look at your colleagues who buy new cars every year, and who take their wives and children twice a year to Europe. Why are you such a moron?”

The poor man tried his best to convince her that he was very honest, didn’t take bribes, and they would have to subsist on his meager salary. It didn’t help. He yelped in pain as she threw something heavy at him. So there’s physical as well as mental torture for you.

I asked another man working in the private sector if he was being abused by his wife.

“Almost every day,” was his response.

“I earn barely enough to keep body and soul together, and here she is, splurging on clothes and whatnot. Yesterday I agreed to her buying a Rs15000 dress for an upcoming wedding, but she used my credit card to buy a Rs50,000 one. I’m spending sleepless nights wondering how I’ll pay my credit card bill”, the poor man concluded with tears in his eyes.

Then I asked my meat-seller if he has any complaints against his wife.

“Like all men in my family, I too wanted to have 10 to 15 children, but I discovered that she takes birth control pills, so I only have two kids, and all my male relatives taunt me for it”. This, in my opinion, is the height of mental cruelty.

The fourth man I met is quite well-to-do, but he too thought his wife tortures him every minute of the day.

“We go abroad on vacation three times a year”, he said,

“Yet she keeps complaining that I don’t spend anything on her. She used to cook when we were poor, but now she has two cooks, so if one is absent, the other will do the cooking. Not a day passes by that she doesn’t throw a party at expensive restaurants for her friends, yet she tells everyone that I’m a miser. I tell you, it’s driving me out of my mind, I often think of killing myself”.

“Why don’t you take another wife?” I asked, and what he said really shocked me.

“I signed the marriage contract without looking at it, and later I found that if I ask her to allow me to take another wife, I have to divorce her and pay her a hundred million immediately. I’m not a politician, Sir; I don’t have that much money”.

I wonder why the man went to the CII in the first place. That August body has already declared the Women’s protection bill as un-Islamic, so did he think they would respond favourably to his petition demanding protection for men? It would be interesting to wait for the CII’s decision. But seeing that they have accepted his petition to ponder upon it, will they ask the government to pass a “Men’s protection bill?” to protect Pakistani men from their highly aggressive wives who are making lives miserable for the poor chaps? Let’s wait and see.

Until then, whether our Pakistani he-men admit it or not, most of them are being “tortured” by their wives!