12.28.07: For those of you who do not read comments and may not know this– there is evidence which indicates that Anu is alive:
Authorities from the Cook County Sheriff’s Department announced they believe Solanki has left the Chicago area with a friend of hers, and that she has gone willingly. [oh, snap]
Developing…
I know we’re still shocked about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but there’s a story about another South Asian woman which deserves attention, in case any of you can help.
We’ve received several tips about a young woman who currently lives in Chicago, who has disappeared under what I think are extra-tragic circumstances. Anu Solanki is 24 years old and a newlywed from Virginia. The last time she was seen was when she was leaving her job at a hotel gift shop, on Monday, the 24th. A few miles from there…
Her car — which was still running with its doors unlocked– was found in a forest preserve parking lot late Monday afternoon.
Forest preserve police used divers to search the river in the Wheeling Forest Preserve on Wednesday, but said they would stay inside the boats on Thursday. [abc7chicago]
This is what makes my heart ache, why I wrote that this story had an extra element of tragedy:
Solanki’s husband said his wife may have gone to the river to place a broken statue of the Hindu deity Ganesh in the water, as they were told to do by a priest, to prevent bad luck. Authorities fear the woman slipped while placing the statue in the current. [abc7chicago]
“There is some concern at this point that this is a rapid current of the Des Plaines River, that it may be wise to check even further,” said Cook County Forest Preserve District spokesman Steve Mayberry. “Miss Solanki is a petite woman, and in fact, the current may have carried her further than initially believed.” [WBBM780]
Who among us hasn’t tried to do the “right” thing, on the advice of someone we trust, even if it seems superstitious? I’m just haunted by the mental picture I have of this girl earnestly, gingerly transporting this broken-but-sacred statue, on her way to the river.
While her slipping and falling while trying to do something respectful is awful enough, there’s the possibility of worse:
Police are checking the validity of a report that Solanki called a relative and said she was being watched, but then called back minutes later to say she was fine. [abc7chicago]
That report says she called a relative, this says she called a friend:
Dignesh Solanki says his wife spoke with a friend by cell phone that afternoon, telling her she was being followed by four men, then called back to say the men had disappeared. [WBBM780]
I hope she will be found soon. Chicago mutineers Neeraj and M, thank you for keeping us posted about this.
harbeer,
I always thought of them as silken restraints-SM Eros.
It’s not only Punjabis; are you familiar with the Sai Maddi case from New Jersey? It happened a few years ago…a Telugu guy got an arranged marriage, beat the living crap out of his wife for a few months, extorted huge dowries from her family in India (with his parents’ collusion), and finally got the word from his parents to kill her and marry another girl. Meanwhile he treated her far worse than the Sabhnanis treated their maids. He stomped on her back and caused spinal fractures. Burned her with cigarettes. Kept her naked in the house. Made her sleep on the floor. The jerk’s sister and brother in law visited one time and witnessed everything without saying or doing anything to stop it. Much like the Sabhnani case, it was only discovered when someone else visited the home and called 911 or something like that. In the end, Sai Maddi (a computer programmer) got 7 years in prison.
My bad, he got 15 years. Here’s a link.
On first read, this sounds so ignorant and outrageous, but the vast majority of your comments are thoughtful. Perhaps I’m not interpreting it well. Would you be willing to clarify what you meant? Otherwise it almost seems like you’re saying, women from other regions wouldn’t do this? Like this is some Guju tendency?
But it’s not necessary to do so with regard to the husband before speculating that he was abusing her? Let’s stop being so paternalistic toward this woman.
Explanation of my statement forthcoming…
I also know of family members of an abused wife (NOT her in-laws, but her own flesh and blood) who did close to nothing, aside from “talking” with their son-in-law, to stop the abuse of their own daughter. So this is why I’m saying we have to know Anu’s circumstances before we judge her.
Sorry, I am just all too familiar with how secretive desi families can be when it comes to this sort of thing. From outside it will look like all is well, when inside, all is Hell.
Anu should watch more TV shows like CSI and Monk…… Damn! What really upset me was that I thought USC was much harder to get into.
what might be an unfortunate outcome of this situation (and other previous situations like jennifer the runaway bride) is that the police might become less willing to declare a case as a missing person case without letting a little more time pass to let the facts become clearer–time that might be vital. i don’t know, just a thought that comes to mind as i read the many news articles that talk about the resoruces that were expended on this case that ultimately proved to be wasted
I ask humbly out of ignorance and all that, maybe possibly maybe.
Has the state recovered all that money spent to search for that runaway bride? She even wrote a book, no? Is Anu’s story also going to be made into Opera too?
why speculate – she’s alive – maybe she can answer some of our questions.
I think we need to separate out two things: a) Marrying someone incompatible due to societal/familial pressure b) Faking your death to deal with a)
I think we can separate out b) as something that inconsiderate or temporarily insane people do regardless of culture. I would have a hard time believing there is anything desi specific about b) and I don’t think there are enough datapoints. But it is my gut feeling that a) is very desi. I see plenty of examples where there is no abuse but no compatibility or physical chemistry in many young arranged desi marriages. When an arranged marriage like this ends, it does so within 12 months. Check out the Indian online dating sites, you will find that most of the divorced profiles mention very short, issueless marriages. Contrast with 50% of failed marriage in the wider American community…here lust will mask fundamental incompatibility for about 3 years.
As we understand, she got married an year ago, and she had the acquintance of her alleged boyfriend for an year. Where is the space for domestic violence and abusive husband. She could be the one abusing the marital relationship. A case of misguided person, IMO.
Just read the link with the Maddi case. It boiled my blood.
One way to perhaps avoid such horrific happenings is to make some sort of law that whoever comes to this country on account of an arranged marriage must first know English and must undergo some sort of cultural training (the American embassy in India can provide this), so that they are aware of such cases as well as who to contact in case of danger, domestic violence, etc. Women especially need to be made aware of the various orgs in this country that are there to help them, so that when they arrive, they arrive a bit more empowered than the previous generation. Overseas arranged marriages like this, where there is obviously a big imbalance power between the two, MUST be viewed with suspicion and I even dare say, completely wiped out and made illegal. Until then, at least the lesser empowered spouse can be required by American law to undergo some sort of awareness course before she be issued a visa.
louiecypher I don’t think your condition(a) applies here.
Pretty sure Dignesh is an FOB and Anu is an ABCD………
Anu is 1.5, if anything. Why else would she be in ESL? She came in her early teens, so she is not an “ABCD”, not that we encourage use of that term or “Fob”.
By ‘extrapolation of one desi woman’s story’ to all desi women, I was referring to how Miss Marples was using ‘Provoked’ starring Aishwarya Rai (based on British Asian/Punjabi Kiranjit Ahluwalia’s life; she set fire to her abusive husband) to provide ‘proof’ for possibility of abuse in this case, not anything about Guju women being more likely to run off or anything like that. Amitabh rightly points out that domestic violence and people turning a blind eye to it happens not only in Punjabi communities, so my statement about Ahluwalia’s story being less applicable because this case doesn’t involve Punjabis is … less applicable. But if you look at stories about the diaspora, many of the stories of domestic violence, ‘honor killings,’ and recently sex-selective abortion, involve Punjabi communities. Obviously some of this is selection bias, since the diaspora is disproportionately Punjabi, which leads to greater community cohesiveness and insularity, and I think that may lead to more stigma around divorce. But this also meshes with my personal observations and experiences.
I really don’t mean for this to sound inflammatory, but I do believe there are differences in the ways that gender relations are culturally mediated; if we can talk about them when it comes to desi vs. non-desi, I think we can talk about them in terms of different desi cultures as well. This is not to say that I think that my people (south Indians; Telugus) are wonderfully equitable when it comes to gender; far from it. I just think there are different kinds and degrees of sexism and misogyny. I don’t want to de-rail this thread though, so feel free to e-mail me and tell me why I’m wrong.
The space? Her own home. The time? 365 days.
But anyway, let’s not accuse, let’s just wait to see if she opens up regarding her circumstances, the reason behind what she did. And you are right, she may have been the one to abuse the relationship. I’m just curious as to why she would take such extreme measures to end a relationship that would normally be ended by good old fashioned divorce.
96 รยท sepia reader said
Boss, you must be god of orkut or something. Many articles show orkut profile picture of Karan. Boy, orkut ke bacchon, bachke rehna :))
Pardesi Gori?
Forgive me for sounding un-pc but my experience with desi families and how they deal with cases of domestic violence and other things that are deemed “shameful” and secret-whisper-worthy automatically makes me suspect something going on behind the scenes that involves more than just a couple when I read or hear cases like Anu’s. It’s an ingrained instinct.
And although I will not be so brazen as to accuse someone without hard facts, still, I will bring up the possibility that something could be going on that we are not privy to.
165 รยท SM Intern said
Gosh, this is such an entertaining saturday ๐
She moved from one fob to another. Whaddayallsayy bout that..hahn? ๐ yenivun vanna fobbie?
Anu & Karan must have never anticipated the publicity ……..imagine that …seeing your picture on TV constantly…. Go get a divorce, lady! Why all the unnecessary drama? It was monumental stupidity dragging the poor husband and family through the dirt, the search team having to ruin their Christmas, the $ 250,000 search expenses and making my favorite Ganesha seem like a weird Voodoo character. What were they thinking? No Plan B, huh?
Jani looks like he’s no more than 14 years old in the photos.
Perhaps these two were so sheltered and naive in regards to how the system works that they thought their plan would actually succeed. Looking at their pics, they do look like a couple of naive kids.
I wonder why she married so young, early twenties, also.
Maybe she is just a confused girl who doesn’t know what she wants out of life.
I agree that there are differences between regions…some areas are more ‘male-dominated’ than others…and southern Indian cultures in general are less prone to the extremes that northern Indian cultures can take this to…probably due to the Muslim cultural influence being stronger in the North, or maybe the matriarchal heritage of the South. There are also caste differences even for people within the same region…Rajputs would be more likely to go ballistic on a cheating wife for example than let’s say baniyas would.
I had also thought of that 1991 case in Chicago and suspected that Anu might have run off herself. But now that she has been found, is it certain that she did go voluntarily? Following all the links here I can only see that the guy called her, not that she called him. It could have been a case of stalking as easily as it could have been a case of her running off completely voluntarily.
Amitabh: As a South Indian I can say that the matriarchal nature of South Indian culture is exaggerated by anthropologists etc. Nairs, Bunts are the only feudal community that practiced this. Though I will say even within Tamil patriarchal systems that the maternal family probably plays a larger part in the lives of their married daughters and their children (children will tend to spend more time with maternal grandparents). Still, men are preferred in terms of property rights and kulam follows the patriarchal norm. Some of the worst offenders in all of India as far as sex selective abortion/female infanticide go are Tamil landed communities who have been patriarchal for at least the past two thousand years.
Whooaa! Amitabh…..dude, “the matriarchal heritage” was only followed by some Hindu communities(Nairs) in North Kerala and Mangalore. It was never a dominant cultural norm over the whole of South India.
Yeah, I remember being confused when someone told me that “an Indian bride” cries during the wedding because at the end she is to leave her family and join that of her husband’s. Before moving to the U.S., we lived with my mother’s parents, and that is what we consider to be our ‘ancestral’ home (despite having only bought that place in the city twenty years ago or so), so it was a little bizarre to me.
Update link…. http://wcbstv.com/topstories/anu.solanki.returns.2.619959.html
Turns out…there was no abuse from Hubby, just regretted getting married. Anu claims that Karan is just a platonic friend. She left the car there so she can have ‘a clean break’ from Dignesh and headed to California.
Nala: That’s not quite the situation in my community. My ancestral place is my father’s village and that would figure into my name. But a married daughter must be taken back in if the marriage fails or if she is widowed. While she can’t remarry and traditionally wears a white sari, leaving her destitute or in some ashram would ruin the reputations of her brothers/parents (if they were not inclined to do the right thing out of love).
That’s a big difference….in the North, your ancestral home or your ancestral village conceptually is through the father’s side. My maternal grandfather (nana) had a big ancestral property (now broken up into many parcels and gradually all sold) but I never considered it MY ancestral property…however I did consider it to be the ancestral property of my maternal uncles’ sons. Which it is. However we too got some money when the land was sold. That’s because legally now property goes to both sons AND daughters. So I guess technically it is my ancestral property as well. But I think I relate to it very differently (sentimentally speaking) than my maternal uncles’ sons do. And even though my mamas (maternal uncles) had no problem sharing with their sisters (including my mom), I’m pretty sure my nana did not intend for his daughters to get any of that…it was for his sons only.
179 รยท Desi fury said
Biz Markie said it best here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtr5-hOjJfs&feature=related
The only thing this woman’s husband had to say to her is “I still love you.”
This guy is better then me because I would have said “Well if she wants everyone to think she is dead, I can still make that a reality!” And then give a evil laugh.
The front cover of today’s Chicago Sun-Times is all desi. Top half is Bhutto and bottom half is a picture of this chick. I thought I was loking at a Indian newspaper.
If the husband was a good guy and never laid a finger on her then I dont feel sorry for the woman I feel sorry for him. First everyone in the country is reading a story about the great lengths in which your wife tried to ditch you then you see a pic of the uber nerd that she left you for. No race of women loves personality more then Indian women. God bless your taste in great personality and disgust for good looking men.
This is the key point for me. She called her friend and said 4 guys were probably following her. Right there, she misled people. If she just disappeared, it would be irresponsible, but not misleading.
What I can’t understand is how dumb are these two persons that they didn’t think people would be looking for her. Why not just write a note or send an email to that friend she lied to?
And people need to lay off Alphabeta’s case. His comments did not cost anyone $250,000 in wasted expenditure. It was harmless speculation. I think the husband has bigger issues on his mind than his earlier comment.
Some of it is probably also rebranding in an American context, e.g. while most of my father’s family still lives in their ancestral village, my mother’s parents sold their land when she was in school and used it to move to the city (all her siblings have also either moved to cities or immigrated to the U.S.), where she met my father (whose siblings mostly still reside in the village). But that house in Hyderabad was what my siblings and I partly grew up in, and it’s the place in India I that I consider my ‘home,’ so that probably leads to us feeling that it is our ‘ancestral’ home, since ties were cut off on the maternal side to our rural origins, and we visited but never permanently lived with our father’s family.
My brother likes to annoy me by saying that he’s going to inherit all my parents’ property since he’s the son.
I agree that there is a general bias against women in the north. This is why Tatiana was summarily shot. Something like this would never have happened in SoCal.
Thanks for the link, Desi Fury. Either Anu isn’t the brightest for not anticipating a frenzied missing-person search, or she subconsciously wanted to punish her husband/parents for repressive circumstances that prevented divorcing like a ‘normal’ lass. I mean, she could’ve at least left a sticky note explaining her journey to Splitsville.
Though 1000 times better than the story initially feared, still a sad story all around. I hope she and those in her life grow from this experience.
I will continue sticking with fatal tiger mauling and BB gun assassination jokes then.
I have not followed the story in detail. Can anybody tell me why Anu couldn’t have simply tried for divorce if she was not happy with her marriage ? Either her husband wouldn’t have agreed to divorce or was it coz she didn’t want to go through all the legal hassles ? Or maybe she is smart ; she wanted to make all this drama so that her husband can agree to start the divorce proceedings now ?
132 รโรยท Harbeer said
yo harbeer, even a mackdaddy like you needs to flex his street cred before rajini the monkey lets you into the
S&MSM dungeon.Good point.
Since she married so young I speculate that she “fell in love” with the man who is now her husband, and her parents probably did not approve of her marrying at that early juncture in her life, but nonetheless, relunctantly agreed due to her persistance, and now that she is unhappy in the very marriage that they tried to prevent, felt trapped to stay in it because afterall, she lobbied so hard for it and her parents would now never support her in a decision to divorce.
OR
It could have been an arranged marriage against her desire. But probably not, because it was stated that the couple dated for at least a year before marrying, unless her parents are so conservative that they made her marry the man just because she was dating him????
Maybe her and Jani cooked up this whole scheme just for fun and are laughing inwardly at the commotion they caused?
Or maybe it is as someone said above, she did this to get back at a repressive husband, in-laws and parents who would otherwise do all they could to prevent her from leaving an unhappy marriage.
Other than these above scenarios, I just can’t figure out why the hell she just wouldn’t file for divorce.
Hey PG, maybe she was indeed going to immerse the idol. As the river gurgled below and she burst into the traditional song of worship that had been sung at Ganesh Chaturthis immemorial in her family, an orphaned stranger in the woods stopped as his nanny used to sing him the same hymn as a lullaby and on festive occasions. He burst through the trees, saw this woman by the river, and immediately, by the tusk like birthmarks they both shared on their right forearms, they realized they were long lost siblings and felt the urge to catch up on twenty years of lost kinship. After all, she did say that he was platonic.
You really need to watch more 80s Hindi movies to improve your understanding of Indian culture.
That, my friend, is sheer brilliance. Have you considered taking up a job as a screenwriter?
192 รยท Rahul said
is that what the kids are calling it these days, rahul? in that case, let’s catch up. it will be platonic, no doubt; but only in this sense.
Or maybe this was all planned by an arch villain who pushed the two of them into each others’ arms, and then, when it was too late, revealed to them that what they had done would not be legal under kinship marriage laws in the United States. All this to take revenge for the guy exposing an “innocent” game of sibling doctor-doctor that the arch villain was engaged in under the bleachers of the school football ground. You know, Oldboy style.
portmanteau, just make sure you don’t taunt that tiger too much while doing so.
192 รโรยท Rahul said
Rahul, you mean like the Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin style ๐ ?
As Anu pulled her dupatta over her bimba fruit red lips out of a deep feeling of lajja, she coyly glanced at the handsome stranger from the corner of her lotus petal like eyes, and the effulgence emanating from her goddess like form defeated the splendour of even the full moon. Beside himself with kama, the stranger approached her, slowly yet determined, like Gajaraja, the king of elephants. As the devatas looked down from the heavens they wondered to themselves, “is this Shiv Shakti in human form, descended to earth to benedict ordinary mortals with their darshan and ashirbad?… Aho! Aho! What austerities has Prthvi Devi performed in order to get the lotus foot prints of such a pair imprinted upon her body?”
Brij, that’s brilliant! They need to get that song on guitar hero.
LOL. I think Pardesi Gori actually has a sense of humor.