The Suicide Station

• Suicide among South Asian women in Britain is three times that of the national average
  
• Of 240 suicides on rail tracks in Britain last year, 80 were Southall women, mostly Sikhs
  
• The victims typically come from Punjab, are educated, and married off to men who lack similar educational or professional backgrounds
  
• Brides are trapped into domestic slavery, suffer abuse and have no one to help them

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Many such brides from Punjab find themselves on a one-way ticket to hell. Many of those who kill themselves are well-educated, and from the more well-off families of Punjab—one of the Southall women who died recently had an MBA degree. And that itself seems to become a problem. "It is culture shock," says Sharma. "There are very few girls from Punjab who are not graduates. I have seen girls come here who have masters degrees in English, in economics. Their families arrange marriages with boys here who are not professional, not educated."

In one case, "a window cleaner working here got married to a well-educated girl after telling her parents he was an engineer in England," says Kailash Puri, agony aunt and novelist, who has long been a support to Punjabi women in distress in Britain. "And then the man and his mother can't handle the education and sophistication of the woman. But if you ask me who is primarily responsible, I have no doubt at all. It is the mother-in-law."

And for every woman who commits suicide, "there are thousands of others who are suffering," she says. "So many of these homes become hellish. There is just so much talk of killing, and dying and suicide around the home, it drives many of these women to actually kill themselves." Many mothers-in-law are actually receptive to the idea of driving the young married woman out of the house, or to suicide. "They do not seem to care one way or the other, because that clears the way to bring in another daughter-in-law—and more dowry. Again and again, I see that dowry is one of the biggest issues."

Of course, many such cases lead to divorce, or the bride running away. "The woman finds some pretext for stepping out of the house, and just goes back to India." But for those not prepared to fight it out in court or return to India, the railway tracks offer a grisly alternative. Says Puri: "The girls feel very protective of their parents; one said to me her parents spent all this money on the wedding, and her return will bring a stain on her father's turban, and she will never let that happen. A time comes when there is nowhere to go to, nowhere to turn to, and they begin to think of suicide as the only liberation from hell." This is the woeful template that sees brides flying out of Delhi and Amritsar, dreaming of a new life in England, but whose dreams and hopes end tragically under a fast train in an alien land.