Work-Life Balance: No Holidays, Long Working Hours; Woman Says Goodbye To Hubby In Bhopal

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): A man coming from a business family and his wife belonging to the service class have filed a divorce petition by mutual consent after living together for two and a half years. Though they come from the same religion and the same caste, the difference in their class spawned disputes between them. So they decided to part ways.

They were married for five years. The man runs a unisex beauty salon and the woman is an MBA. They have no children. Soon after the wedding, the woman, who came from a service class family, found the lifestyle at her new home strange. Her husband’s working hours were long.

The salon he ran opened at 10 am and he would return home almost after 12 hours. In contrast, the woman had grown seeing her father working for a fixed eight hours. There were no weekly or other holidays for the salon remained open all seven days a week and even on festivals. 

In her maiden family, there were many days on which her father was not required to go to the office at all.   No holidays and long working hours meant fewer excursions for the couple. Frequent visits to cinemas, restaurants, markets and parks were out of the question.

The woman wanted to take up a job but the man said he was earning enough and she should better run the household.  After two and half years of marriage, the woman walked out of her husband’s home saying that she was feeling frustrated and suffocated.

She filed police complaints charging her husband with harassing her for dowry and subjecting her to domestic violence. A compromise was then worked out with the help of mediators.

The woman withdrew the criminal cases and they both applied for divorce by mutual consent to the Bhopal District Family Court. “This is an example of how sometimes after marriage women find it impossible to change the lifestyle they were used to at their parents’ place,” says Khan, a counsellor at the Family Court who dealt with the case.