‘If you can’t cook, stop eating’: what husband of India’s airline hero Neerja told her

Neerja Bhanot | Cover - The Smile of Courage

Aneesh Bhanot, Neerja’s brother, reveals his sister’s plight in marriage that left her starved of both finances and food.

The office of our father was at the Industrial Assurance Building, right opposite Churchgate Station, around 17 kilometres from our house in New MIG, Bandra East where we had shifted after staying around 5 years in Patrakar. Hindustan Times had bought two adjacent apartments in Gulmohar building and connected them, so we had a four bedroom apartment. Our father would either catch a train from Bandra to Churchgate or drive down in our Fiat car (MRJ 5633).

One day, he caught a train and he was carrying some back issues of The Hindustan Times with him. As he was leafing through the newspapers, he somehow got interested in a matrimonial advertisement placed by the family of a marine engineer. He responded to the advertisement and the boy, his mother, sister and brother-in-law came to our house a few days later. Even though our family comprised of two sons and one daughter, we were vehemently an anti-dowry family and this was made very clear to them. “All we want is that the marriage should be done at a good place, nothing else,” they told our parents. Neerja and that boy had a discussion for around 5 minutes in her room and that was it. (Lots of people ask me what was the name of that guy, but the only one which suits him is ‘Scum’).

We are a middle class family and money has always been an issue. Since the marriage had to  be done at a ‘good place’, our father raised funds from various sources and the marriage was held at a 5 star hotel in Bandra Bandstand – the WelcomGroup Sea Rock.

Most of Neerja’s friends were very surprised on her agreeing for the marriage. As Eli says, “Just close to her graduation she got married and I was left wondering how a girl so smart, who had a lot to achieve, had agreed to settle down in marriage so early. With her it was always family first. She was their Lado, her dads agyakari beti(obedient daughter).”

Vrinda gives an insight into Neerja’s mind. “She explained to me how her dad had been impressed by the prospective groom and his sister. They were highly educated and seemed so very respectable. After the “dekho” ceremony, Neerja said that her dad told her that he would be happy if she accepted this proposal. ‘I really saw no reason to deny my father,’ she told me. I was rendered speechless. This was so unlike the Neerja I knew,” remarked Vrinda.

Following the arranged marriage in March 1985, Neerja went to the Gulf (Sharjah) to join her husband and set up a happy home. But the marriage went sour within two months. She was starved off finance and food in a foreign land and the bright girl lost five kilograms of weight in two months. She had to borrow money from the ‘husband’ even to make a telephone call.

Before the marriage, it was made clear that it would be a dowry less marriage. But when she reached the ‘ordained home’ she was told that even a ‘very poor man gives something to his daughter in marriage’. She came back to Bombay to honour a modelling contract. An ugly letter followed, listing terms for her return, which no person with self-respect could accept. The letter listed a straight formula: accept the humiliating terms without a whimper and return at your own cost or ‘we will separate’. The worst was that the letter asked her as to what was she? ‘You are just a graduate’. The young girl could not pocket this.

Given below are some excerpts from the letter written by that ‘guy’ to Neerja :

• Right from the first day, I am unhappy with you. Your moves and all of your parents have been reviewed by me. I can say you all are not good people.
• You have to take permission from me for everything that you do.
• I do not like people who do not listen to me.
• After marriage, I have not been happy at all. You have been of no use to me. You could not take care of me nor give me simple food.
• Even a poor man gives something to his daughter on her marriage.
• You are just a graduate. Your modelling success was due to your fathers contacts. Money was the motto. I do not regard this as any achievement.
• I am very strict.

The same letter then goes on to list some of the ‘terms’ and the ‘duties’ of Neerja:

• Take charge of the house, in the true sense. All household matters should be done. Cooking has to be done, whether you work or not.
• You have to be quiet, soft-spoken and well behaved. A wife has to accept her husband as he is, love and respect him.
• Modelling, fashion shows are not accepted. You can work as a secretary or computer programmer. I prefer you to be a computer programmer rather than a typist.
• Your father’s home and your past etc. should be forgotten. You should live a life which my family demands.
• You have to think and decide. I do not want any arguments. I want a true, clean decision, whether you accept what I have mentioned above.
• If you do not accept, we will separate.

In a separate, handwritten note which Neerja gave to my father after she came back to Mumbai, she listed out what she had gone through in Sharjah:

Taunts he would regularly hurl at me:

1. There is nothing I can buy for you.
2. If you can’t cook, then stop eating.
3. Where does the food in the house go?
4. Your family has given nothing.
5. You have brought bad luck.
6. You have no manners.
7. What do you think of yourself ?
8. Your dad is a miser.
9. You people have spent nothing on the marriage.
10. I don’t think my mother can ever like you.
11. If you want anything, bring it from your mother’s house.

I remember that, as a family, we all sat on the dining table and discussed the matter. The decision was practically instantaneous and unanimous.

This is an excerpt from the book ‘Neerja Bhanot: The Smile of Courage’ by Aneesh Bhanot. It was published by United Newspapers in 2018.