Gaslit, Isolated, Abandoned: The Untold Story Of A Kashmiri Husband

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)
Representational photo

By Syed Majid Gilani

Sameer doesn't like to talk about pain. He wears it like old wool: heavy, familiar, too close to be shed in public.

The way he walks, head down but sure-footed, tells you he's someone who's used to bearing weight. He works in a government department, keeps a low profile, doesn't talk much at work.

But if you follow him home, or rather to the room he rents now, you might find pages: tucked in drawers, behind the door, scribbled late into the night.

That's where the story lives. The one he kept hidden behind a closed door for years.

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Sameer thought he had done everything right. He married Mehnaz because she seemed warm, intelligent, graceful.

In the early days, their life felt like the one he had always imagined: children, a home, calm mornings. But slowly, that dream began to crack. And no one saw it coming.

“She had this way,” he says quietly,“of making you feel wrong even when you were just being kind.”

At first, it was just small things. Snide comments that stung, disapproval in the way she looked at him, subtle undermining in front of the children.

Then it became more pointed: cold silences, money demands, late-night accusations. Sameer found himself walking carefully, avoiding confrontation, offering more than he could afford-financially and emotionally.

He had taken a loan to renovate his ancestral home, a modest house filled with memories of his parents, where he wanted his children to grow up. That home became another battleground.

“She had other plans,” he says, pausing.“I didn't know I was the only one trying to build a future.”

Mehnaz began recording him, collecting his contacts, monitoring his phone. She twisted his conversations into weapons. Over the years, she slowly turned their children against him. The calls stopped. The greetings faded. His son blocked him. His daughter's voice grew curt.

Sameer still remembers the day he called and no one picked up.“It felt like dying slowly,” he says.“Like you're watching yourself disappear from people you love the most.”

The strategy was clear in hindsight. Mehnaz never asked for a divorce. She wanted him to file it, to look like the guilty one. If he resisted, she could play the victim: accuse him, isolate him, and still ask for alimony.

Sameer never hit her. Never raised his voice. He cried, though. A lot. At night, in that silent room. Sometimes, he pressed his ear to the wall as if the house itself would tell him what to do.

“She wanted me to snap,” he says.“She wanted evidence.”

He didn't give it to her. Instead, he began writing. At first, it was just notes. Then short reflections. Soon, paragraphs. It gave him something to hold onto when everything else had slipped away.

“I was not made for war,” he says.“But I survived one.”

Mehnaz, not satisfied, filed complaints with the police, painted him as abusive, told neighbours he was mentally unstable. She even approached his colleagues, hoping to provoke a reaction. Sameer, still unwilling to retaliate, bore it all with silence. The kind that makes people uncomfortable.

When I ask why he didn't leave earlier, he looks away.“I thought I was chosen to carry this. Maybe God gave me strength because no one else could have handled it.”

It's hard not to think about all that time he spent alone in that room. How many tears went into that pillow, how many prayers were whispered into the ceiling. He says he prayed for patience more than justice.

But something shifted when he began writing. He reconnected with old friends. He visited his parents' grave. He walked through the streets of his childhood neighborhood, letting the cold air of dawn fill his lungs.

“It reminded me of who I was before her,” he says.“Before the gaslighting, the fear, the second-guessing.”

Mehnaz didn't take well to his awakening. She doubled down new accusations, new forums. But this time, Sameer didn't crumble. He didn't fight either. He simply stepped away. He set boundaries. He stopped explaining himself. And in doing so, he found clarity.

Now, when he looks back, he doesn't do it with bitterness. There's pain, yes. Tremendous pain. But there's also dignity.

“You learn that love is not enough,” he says,“especially if it's not returned.”

Sameer still misses his children. There are nights when he dreams of them running through the hallway of their old home. But he also knows that truth has its own rhythm.“One day,” he says,“they'll see what really happened.”

Sameer's story isn't rare. But his silence was. In a world that often tells men to toughen up, he broke by bending. He didn't become cruel. He didn't retaliate. He didn't surrender to vengeance. He simply endured. And then, he healed.

• Syed Majid Gilani is a government officer and writer who reflects on human emotions, family bonds, and the quiet resilience of everyday lives. Reach him at [email protected] .

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