Bushra Ansari was a guest on Nida Yasir’s talk show where among many things, she opened up about her abusive first marriage and the ways her husband, Iqbal Ansari, restricted her from the things she used to love. Ansari and her ex-husband parted ways after 36 years of marriage. The veteran actress said in the interview that she was quite naive when she got married:
“Girls who are around 19 or 20 years old when they’re getting married, it’s not easy for them to stand up for their rights, and most of the time they don’t want to. I believe that young people are very innocent and idealistic, which is why it is easy for an older person to enter their lives and mold them to his taste. Especially it is your parents and other relatives who complain about your bad habits to your husband, and encourage him to keep a strict control over you. But girls are very naive when their getting married, they’re like jelly. But I’m proud of this generation today because women are well-educated and also know how to stand up for themselves.”
Ansari went on to share how she followed the customs of her time to obey and act according to the wishes of her husband, hoping that he might like her and be happy but instead of that, she was expected, all the time, to do what he said.
“He asked that i remove my nose pin, which I loved, but I agreed. He also said don’t wear ghararay on your wedding so I decided to switch to wearing sari’s. Then he also said don’t wear mehndi on your hands on your wedding, I agreed. Even though this wasn’t a twenty year long affair, but we only knew each other for three months and then we got married.”
“I thought that if I would say ‘theek hai jee, aap ki marzi’, then everything would be fine. Because once he is happy, then I would also be happy. Whatever he said, I would do. He said stop going to your friend’s house, I agreed. I thought that he was a temple, and I was running around it. But this was the kind of mindset women from this generation used to follow because they were told this is how they must remain happy in their marriages. I’m not saying you should completely rebel and refuse to be nice to your husband, because sometimes listening to someone’s request is a good thing and they acknowledge you. Otherwise you listen to them once, then they keep expecting you to listen to everything they have to say.”
You can watch the complete interview here:
