Kusha Kapila’s divorce: How divorce can empower women, the way marriage once did?

Kusha Kapila has done many cool things with her life. So, two days ago, when I chanced upon her divorce announcement, my immediate thought was: cool, good for her! And then, like a normal person, I forgot about it because it’s her private life. What I didn’t expect was to see her trending on Twitter with Indians going down a rabbit hole villainising her using all the outdated tropes imaginable. In 2023, this makes no sense. Why is a woman getting divorced a cataclysmic event for our country? Especially when divorce isn’t a tragedy, a bad marriage is. Is it so difficult to imagine that divorce empowers women the way marriage once did? That divorce can be someone’s happy ending, the way a good marriage is for someone else? That divorce can be a celebration and not a calamity? I’ll let you in on a little secret: the day I got divorced—5th December 2013—was one of the best days of my life! But it almost did not happen. On the way to the family court in Delhi that day, my mother and I got stuck in a bad traffic jam. We were pretty nonchalant about it. The last two times we’d had to wait for more than an hour in court. But our lawyer called to say that the judge was on time today and there were only two hearings before us. If I didn’t make it on time, our case would be further postponed. We panicked. While we were not far from the courthouse, the car we were in was not moving. Like in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, where the father tells his daughter, ‘Jaa Simran, jile apni zindagi’, my mother turned to me and said, ‘Jaa Meghna, karle apna divorce. Jile apni zindagi. Run!’ I got out of the car and ran towards the court building. Despite the winter chill, I was sweating in three minutes. My shoes kept coming off. The lawyer kept calling me: ‘Where are you? Hurry!’ I realised I would take forever to reach the court. I couldn’t miss the hearing, not after everything that had happened. So, I waved to the traffic passing by, hoping to get a lift. A man on a scooter stopped and asked what had happened. ‘Bhaiya, it’s a matter of life and death,’ I told him in Hindi. ‘Please give me a lift till the end of the road.’ That man, bless his soul, told me to hop on to the back seat of his scooter. ‘Where exactly should I drop you?’ he asked, as I told him to go faster and faster. ‘Outside the divorce court,’ I said. The man actually stopped his scooter and turned to stare at me, like I was mad. ‘Please, I beg you,’ I said. ‘It’s a matter of life and—’ ‘—divorce,’ he chuckled. The man revved his scooter, and in twenty seconds flat, he dropped me right outside the courthouse. I shouted out a thanks and scrambled up to the first floor, to hear my name being called out. ‘You arrived just in time,’ my lawyer said. His shirt was drenched in sweat. I looked at him and said, ‘You have no idea how.’ I entered the courtroom and in ten minutes I came out beaming! I WAS FINALLY DIVORCED! I was beyond thrilled and relieved that I never had to see my appallingly awful ex-husband and his equally horrendous parents ever again. I had wasted seven years of my life on a person who didn’t deserve even seven seconds of me. I was sick of being depressed. I was sick of being afraid. I was sick of the fairy-tale lie peddled to me since I was a little girl that marriage ‘completed’ a woman when, in actuality, marriage can also ‘completely destroy’ a woman. So, as usual, I created my own narrative. I celebrated my freedom in Mumbai that night with champagne and friends. I continued the celebrations at an Avicii concert at Sunburn the next day. I kept the celebrations on for more than a month, when––on 10th Jan (the day of our wedding)––I threw a DIVORCE PARTY! NO ONE had heard of a divorce party back then. Yes, even in Mumbai. Ten years ago, divorce was still taboo in India. There was a stigma and sting attached to it. People used to whisper the word. Or spell it out––D.I.V.O.R.C.E. They definitely didn’t shout it out loud. They definitely didn’t wear it as a badge of honour. After all, you can rape and murder someone, and no one will find out, but get divorced and you face the most public of all ‘failures’. I refused to give divorce that kind of power. My marriage had been such a hellhole of barbs and taunts and abuse that I had literally become bulletproof to what anyone said. No one’s opinion of me mattered to me more than my opinion of myself. I knew what I had gone through, I knew I wouldn’t wish that upon my worst enemy, and I knew that I was free not just from marital expectations but from all societal expectations. Divorce was not a failure or a stigma. Divorce was a celebration. It was the start of a new beginning. My divorce heralded the new me. Nothing negative would have a hold on me again. I was finally free! Truly, actually FREE! Forget my living and travelling around the world, making my mark, making my own money, writing my own books, living my best life. Eventually divorce was the most liberating thing that happened to me. Tragedy doesn’t change us, it reveals us. What my friend’s insisted on calling ‘India’s first divorce party’ was so good—with my little one-bed apartment, which I lived in then, cramped with 70 people—we didn’t even take photos! All I have left to remind me of it are fab memories and this little Facebook invite link (yup, that was a thing back then!) with some hilarious comments from some of my friends about a divorce party’s music list, dress code, food and even mood. I wish we were prepared for divorce the way we’re prepared for marriage. We’re always taught how to fall IN love­­––palat, pheromones, beauty, money, lust, convenience­­––but we’re never taught how to fall OUT of love. Therefore, we don’t know that marriages don’t die quickly like a heart-attack. They die slowly like a cancer. Leaving a marriage is not an event, like a wedding, it’s a process. Which makes divorce, like a bad marriage, bloody hard. Surviving it needs applause not derision. I wish we were also told that divorce is not something that happens to ‘bad’ people. In fact, nothing reflects life’s irony as much as the fact that some of the nicest people I know are divorced, while some turd-of-a-worm people I’ve met have been married for decades. Marriage does not equate virtue just like divorce does not indicate vice. Let people live through private ruptures the way they like—in solitude or exhilaration—because heartbreak is our greatest teacher, a catalyst to a new path, and an entry point into wisdom and liberation that everyone should be grateful for. So, please leave Kusha Kapila  alone! Meghna Pant is a multiple award-winning and bestselling author, screenwriter, columnist and speaker, whose latest novel BOYS DON’T CRY (Penguin Random House) will soon be seen on screen. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.