ISHA'S WAIT: Money, Love, and Kinship in the Wake of Domestic Violence in India

Abstract

Isha waits in her low-income parents' home for her estranged husband, charged for dowry and domestic violence, to pay her the legally mandated maintenance money. I listen to her as she talks about pyaar, or love, and domestic violence as arising from the absence of its ehsaas, or feeling/realization, by the abusive husband. The awaited money is infused with the hopeful imagination that it will generate both pyaar and its ehsaas. I argue that money becomes a substance of kinship assigned an agentive role in engendering the ethical transformation of a “bad” husband to create “good” kinship. Exploring the ways in which the tenuous legal promise of money sustains imaginations of reformed kinship futures, I outline how centrally money shapes the experience of domestic violence and its aftermath.