Indian woman shares the story of how she escaped her arranged marriage
For most of her life, Haritha Khandabattu has felt controlled. First, by her parents growing up and then later by her in-laws and her husband. Humiliated but determined, she decided to get out.
“I ended up marrying a man that I barely knew and didn’t love,” Khandabattu shared in an Instagram post on Humans of Amsterdam.
“My in-laws were very controlling and I was forced to give my salary to them. They demanded I would contact my father and ask him for a dowry. My husband turned out just to be as controlling as his parents. He would check my phone regularly and accused me multiple times of cheating on him.”
“Every day the situation was getting worse.”
Khandabattu describes how she tried to work on the relationship for a year and a half, encouraging her husband to travel and witness other cultures, hoping to ignite some compassion in him. But her efforts were fruitless.
“One day, after a huge fight I could no longer take it. I talked to my manager at work and I asked him if I could get transferred to another country. He told me I could work in Amsterdam. I didn’t need to think about it and I accepted his offer.”
“When I arrived at the Amsterdam airport it felt as if I could finally breath again.”
Being in Amsterdam exposed Khandabattu to other women who had overcome major struggles and made her realize that her life could be so much more. In that moment, she decided to divorce her husband and move to Amsterdam permanently. But doing that would be no easy feat.
“When my father found out I wanted to divorce my husband he was really upset. He suggested I would travel to India so we could talk things through. I wasn’t planning on changing my mind but in order to get my divorce settled I would have to go to India.”
Returning to India she quickly realized that making this life change wouldn’t be as easy as she had hoped. Now that she was getting a divorce, she need to get a new passport, which in India required the signature of either a father or husband.
Through a series of schemes, lies and luck, Khandabattu managed to get a new passport and with a little more luck, a residency card for the Netherlands.
“If I had been honest I would have never gotten it,” she says.
Khandabattu eventually made it back to Amsterdam ready to start her new life.
“When I landed in Amsterdam I took the train from the airport to my house. I didn’t cry, I couldn’t believe all that had really happened. I felt as if I finally had woken up from a bad dream. I had been gone for 45 days in total.”
While Khandabattu still isn’t officially divorced and conversations with her parents are strained, she doesn’t regret her actions.
“Amsterdam is magical, this is where I want to be. This is my home and my friends are my family.”
