Kalpana’s story

My name is Kalpana. But if you can’t pronounce my name correctly, you can call me with my Canadian name Kaila.

I’m a married women immigrated to Canada with my husband about 40 years ago. My husband and I don’t have our own children, but we’ve two of our nephews living with us. They came here to study. Both of the boys go to an engineering college near by.

 
My husband is an engineer, also. He was raised in a privileged family and always got what he wanted. If he didn’t, he used to tell his family that he will run away from home or jump out of the window and his family used to run after him pleading him “please don’t jump”. His family had told me all this when we’re just married, some 50 years ago.

I’m his second wife. My husband was in his teenage when he got married the first time with a girl of submissive nature. She had died after a few years of marriage. People used to tell me that my husband had treated his first wife as if she was his slave-wife (a servant girl who was also used for sexual purposes). But I’m a different person. I’m everything his first wife was not. My husband had found this out fairly quickly!

The first thing I noticed about my husband, after we’re married, was that he threatened his family to get what he wanted. His tactic of jumping out of the window or running away from home had worked for him, so a few days after we’re married he used the tactic with me also. I was to give him all of my possessions I’d brought with me from my parents. But I told him “no”. What I brought from my family belonged to me I told him and he began to proceed towards the window of our bedroom. I gave one good glance at him and told me “go ahead”. Guess what happened next? My husband realized that his tactic wasn’t going to work with me, so he stopped using it.

You see, when I was barely two years old my own father had died after jumping out of his window. I don’t remember him, but my family say that my father was a very strong man with lot of good qualities. However, his emotional problem had taken his life and our happiness. “He was an educated man, but foolish,” my mother used to tell me about my father. I had to grow up hearing people around me say “poor child, she never knew her father’s love,” etc., and I remember my mother sobbing to sleep every night. I wasn’t going to let my husband do the same thing to me!

After almost 50 years of marriage, I look at my husband now and sometimes I kid him “do you still feel like jumping out of the window?” He looks at me as a helpless child and begs me not to remind him of that. He especially feels awful about the ways he had treated to his first wife.

I feel bad for torturing him like this. To make him feel good, I try reciting some of the Hindu verses on reincarnation and transmigration of a Hindu’s life. I try shifting the blame from my husband to his first wife’s own fate. According to Hinduism, one’s fate is determined by his/her own karma performed in the previous life. I reason my husband that his first wife must have done some bad karma or had troubled him in some ways. Because of that she had come back to him to pay back her “debt” (by being his wife). Being an engineer, my husband agrees with my logic (the law of cause and effect) and says “that makes sense; doesn’t it?”