Jaitly made her feelings known on Sunday in a rather raw Instagram post. The actor was unflinching in her take on the 33-year-old’s passing: this is what happens when you let isolation run its course, and it’s up to the family to stop it from happening in the shadows.
A celebrity voice for a hard truth
What got to Jaitly was the way a lot of the noise around the case was focused on the wrong things while a family in mourning was left without answers. To her, Twisha was a woman of means and talent who was in pain behind a locked door. “Abuse doesn’t always show as a bruise,” she put it. “It can be loneliness, control, or humiliation.”
You could tell the post resonated because it puts a new spin on domestic violence. Jaitly makes the case that a woman’s pain can be so normalised that it ceases to register with the people in her life, even if on the surface everything seems fine.
Some of this is personal for Jaitly
She has been in the news for her own reasons, and she didn’t shy away from using that to make a point. After her parents were gone, she found herself with three young ones and no financial leg to stand on.
“I put in more time than I should have,” she said, “because I thought it was the right thing to do for the family.” But the isolation set in, the days ran together and you start to question what’s real. She admitted to telling herself that just making it through was the same as living.
Right now, Jaitly is in the middle of a divorce with Peter Haag, the Austrian hotelier. A domestic abuse case has been filed against him. And she says that even with the courts’ orders and joint custody, she is being kept from her children.
Her plea to the rest of us
She was very direct. Her heart is with Twisha’s kin and with any woman who is hurting in private. This is what she wants you to do:
– When your daughter calls, you go get her.
– Don’t let the abuse have the last word.
– See for what it is: isolation and humiliation are violence, too.
– Move in before the silence does you in.
The status of the Twisha Sharma matter
Twisha, 33, was discovered at her Bhopal home. Her side of the story is that her husband and mother-in-law were behind her death, with charges of dowry harassment and abetment to suicide. It has been a source of anger for many in the country.
They laid her to rest on Sunday, 12 days on. The high court had called for a second postmortem by AIIMS Delhi to see if they could get some justice and put to rest the questions the family had.
With everyone wondering what was missed, Jaitly’s words are a nudge to look at the emotional side of things and hold people in their own homes to account.
There is no time to put this off
Jaitly’s point is well taken because she is naming the more insidious ways a woman is put in her place. Isolation. Gaslighting. No one to turn to. You don’t have to see a mark to know she is in a trap.
Then there is her own legal tussle. Last November she put in a case for cruelty and manipulation, asking for Rs 50 crore. She has been open about how it stings to be apart from her boys, Winston and Viraaj.
The bottom line is you can’t let the kind of abuse that is in plain view go on unchallenged. By having a word with us, Jaitly is making it clear: be there when it counts. That is what makes a difference.
