Switch off the cell, your husband, in-laws think you’re having an affair

Chitleen K Sethi

Indian Express

 Married women should be more “adjusting,” their parents should be less interfering, cellphones are breaking marriages because a wife keeps talking to her parents and her husband and in-laws think she’s talking to another man.

Such gems roll on and on in a startling advisory issued by the Punjab State Commission for Women, a statutory body constituted to safeguard the interests of women.
The advisory, in Punjabi, released yesterday, makes the bizarre claim that it takes “at least two years” for a marriage to work during which the newly married girl should make “small adjustments” and not keep calling her parents.
When contacted, commission chairperson Gurdev Kaur Sangha said that the advisory has been prompted by an increasing number of women seeking divorce. And that its “advice” will save many a marriage.
Like the one on phones. “Just because the newly married girl is talking on the mobile all the time should not be construed as her having an illicit relationship by the boy and their in-laws,” says the note.

“This is not a joke,” Sangha said. “Almost 90 per cent of newly married men and women want a divorce because the boy or his family is sure that the girl is talking to another man when, in reality, in a majority of the cases, she is actually constantly taking advice from her own parents. I squarely blame the mobile phone for many marriage break-ups.”
Sure enough, the advisory blames “over-use” of mobile phones by “newly married girls” for domestic strife. “Mobiles are used by the newly married girl to call up her parents, almost every hour just to update on the happenings in her in-laws’ house and take their view on everything,” reads the note. Sangha’s note has some suggestions for the groom’s family as well: “Make the newly wed girl feel welcome to their house and to treat her as an equal and as a daughter so that she is at ease.” That no one can argue with.