My in-laws have a tractor driver called Hasan: a bucolic, charas smoking barbarian with sun- ravaged, pockmarked skin, and a curly mass of unruly hair. When I saw him first around twelve years ago, his clothes were so dirty that from twenty feet away, we could almost smell the rank odour that emanated from him. He turned up on our doorstep quite unexpectedly. My husband used to sell bulk package tours of pilgrims on Umrah and Hajj; a regular Afghan client wasn’t able to pay his bill one year and instead we found a ramshackle Caterpillar tractor, a rickety old boat, and an emaciated horse at our doorstep with Hasan, the messenger/tractor driver who explained in his limited Urdu, that all of this was in lieu of cash. None of these goods nearly amounted to the sum owed, but it offered us some entertainment. Within a few weeks, the boat and horse were returned with thanks and the Afghan finally paid up. Hasan and the Caterpillar however remained and became part of our household.           

           Hasan’s handy; clearing new passageways with his orange tractor. A decade ago he brought home a pretty, young, clear-skinned girl. Unlike him, she is clean, polite and delicate; she is civilised, and when we saw her for the first time she looked utterly terrified of him. One couldn’t help but feel a wave of protective sympathy. It was clearly a mismatch. The contrast between the two of them was startling. What were her parents thinking?

            Unlike our other domestic staff Hasan didn’t allow his wife the respite of spending her day working in our house. What would it have meant? Stitching the odd button onto a shirt, chopping vegetables, watching my children at play? Instead she would spend her days alone, confined to a one-room quarter, summer and winter. I do wonder how she’s coped with her life and with her husband, and I thought of her when I met my brother’s colleague Roshan who hails from Ghizer, a region in the Northern Areas. Although the women of the Northern Areas have the good fortune to have received an education, Roshan told me something most troubling about the way it has been affecting their lives. Because development projects have focussed just on educating the girl child and not boys, this has left a troubling imbalance. The rich and poor in this country live in such utterly different worlds, as though we are living in a different realm altogether.

                In the same time-zone and realm as the rest of us, as a tourist to the Northern Areas I’d heard about the extensive development work done by these development agencies and the project initiated by them focussing on the girl child; the philosophy being that if you educate females, within one generation they, as mothers, will make sure that all their sons and daughters, will get educated and hence the education problem would be eradicated within one generation. This education programme was launched in the 1970s but took off in earnest in the 1980s.
>  
>           According to Roshan , Ghizer has proudly boasted a remarkably high female literacy rate. But in stark contradiction to this, today Ghizer also has a shocking suicide rate amongst its females; possibly the highest suicide rate of women in the world. What the development agencies didn't factor into the equation of all its projections was the reality of a tribal society entrenched in atavistic customs and ancient prejudices. In retrospect boys should have been educated in tandem, and today the school system is being improved for them too. But this is being done sadly after one generation has had to suffer from an experimental breakdown.

               Women have been entering into arranged marriages with the men of the area, as is the tradition. With their comparative lack of education in this generation, the husbands have been resentful of their wives and have subjected them to active or at times passive punishment for the empowerment that their education has afforded them. Generations of natural male domination has been threatened by women’s emancipation. Women are not just able to read and write, they are able to earn more and this has led to a huge gender imbalance on the domestic front. The disempowerment men have felt has meant such heightened discomfort leaving women feeling trapped to unsuitable partners.

             Divorce or khulla is not an easy option in traditional societies. For most women it is impossible to contemplate such a notion. Even though some brave women do take the option, most remain in unhappy marriages. It’s not an unusual story. An alarming number of them are seeking a shocking and tragic way out of their marriages. The only answer they can find for their problems is suicide.