Child bride at 14, widow at 18, refugee overnight: Parbati’s story of survival
Think of this: you are a fourteen-year-old child. Your dream is to make yourself a star in the world. Someone to be looked up to, someone who can’t be ignored but is a light under which people have started to assemble. Someone who’s a beacon of light for others to follow. Or maybe a movie star who people adore. Or maybe you are Parbati (this courageous lady has asked me to use this name for security purposes).
We met in a mutual friend’s apartment in Plainsborough, a small town in New Jersey. She had recently come to the US of A as a visitor and was living with this mutual friend. She was there with her daughter, who appeared to be in her late 20s or early 30s. Over the next hour or more, she laid out her story.
Growing up in the southern part of her former country, Pakistan, she was the third of four children to parents who worked as manual labor. The other children were an older sister (now deceased), an older brother (also deceased), and a younger brother who was abducted and is now officially missing! So how did she get out of this mess, you ask?
At 14, she was married to someone more than 3 times her age. He was a Christian, she a Hindu; he had studied to earn a degree in Commerce (BCom). Parbati was one of your typical lower-middle-class teenagers. She wanted to study, but situations didn’t permit this. Her husband was a “businessman “ who did a lot of work through brokers, selling his merchandise to countries in the Middle East!
A hardworking man, he was “a good person”, Parbati told me. She would conceive a few years later, giving birth to a beautiful daughter, Susan. Her husband died a little more than a year later, to Tuberculosis, which she told me, was rampant at the time! The business (she wouldn’t tell me what type of business) was decent, with enough for the two of them to live without any significant debt. Being the typical old-fashioned woman from the subcontinent, she had no idea how to continue the business her late husband had run till his untimely death. Parbati was distraught and thought this was the end of her world. Not only was she expected to continue running the business, but she also had to care for her infant, all while she had not even reached 20 years!!
However, things were going to turn bad. REALLY BAD! How bad she didn’t know till the government at the time, led by ZA Bhutto, was overthrown and Gen Zia positioned himself as the overall authority on everything in his country! This included ensuring the country abandoned an already fragile minority within the country’s populace! Things were about to get interesting. Really interesting for the rest of the world, horrifying for the minorities within the country.
Her parents had crossed the eastern border and were somewhere in India; in that situation, it was “look out for yourself”! Her sister and brother had passed away; the younger brother was “missing”. They invited her, but she had an extended family, from her husband’s side, with whom she lived, and sadly declined.
Over the next few months, things got worse. She then realized the reality. She was on her own, left to fend for herself and her infant. She had to get out before the storm hit her and her infant! However, the business was still there to be handled! She called her brother-in-law and asked if he wanted the business! After a few days, he agreed. She handed him over the business for free, took whatever money she could (about 15 thousand PKR), and quietly moved from there to India. Once in India, she converted the money to INR and got a few hundred rupees less, but she didn’t have a choice.
Parbati was now aware that moving to India was not going to be her final move. Jobs were difficult to get with no education, no background, and a very new environment that made her nervous! She needed to move to a country where she wouldn’t be one in hundreds of millions of people. She spent each rupee like it was her last, ensuring both of them got the most from that money.
She didn’t know, but she was probably the luckiest woman then; within a few weeks, her former business was gone, taken over by one of Zia’s vocal supporters. She would later learn that her brother-in-law was taken into custody for unknown reasons!
(To be continued in the second part…)
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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- Where did humanity go wrong? The true story of Parbati – Part 1 - December 6, 2025
- My New Letter Series – Dear Indian People, Who’s The Bigger Enemy… - July 18, 2025
- My New Letter Series – Dear Families of American & Indian Services… - June 19, 2025
