hello大家好！婚礼八周后，她的丈夫回到了意大利的奶牛场继续工作。考尔再也没有见过他。“几天变成了几周，然后变成了几个月，”她最近在法塔赫南加尔村的家中说。“我一直盼望见到他。”
遭受苦难的远不止考尔一个人。据政府官员和活动人士称，数万名印度女性被在国外工作的丈夫遗弃，根据当地社会习俗，许多女性被困在婆家，有的长达数十年之久。
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Like many other women in the state of Punjab, long a hub of emigration from India, Sharndeep Kaur aspired to marry an Indian working abroad and follow him to a more prosperous life overseas. 旁遮普邦长期以来一直是印度移民的中心，莎恩迪普·考尔像那里的许多女性一样，渴望嫁给在国外工作的印度人，并跟随他在海外过上更富裕的生活。
On Jan. 13, 2014, she thought her dream had come true. 2014年1月13日，她以为梦想成真了。
That day in a Sikh temple, she married Harjinder Singh, who had just returned from Italy, and moved in with his family. 那天在一座锡克教寺庙里，她嫁给了刚从意大利回来的哈金德·辛格，并搬进了和他家人在一起的住所。
After a few days, though, her in-laws began demanding about $10,000 so her husband could resettle in Canada. 然而，几天后，她的公婆开始索要大约一万美元，以便她的丈夫可以搬到加拿大生活。
When she failed to secure the money, they starved and beat her, according to a police complaint that did not result in any charges. 根据警方报案记录，由于她未能筹到钱，他们不给她饭吃，还殴打她，那次报警没有导致任何指控。
Eight weeks after the wedding, her husband went back to his dairy job in Italy. Ms. Kaur never saw him again. 婚礼八周后，她的丈夫回到了意大利的奶牛场继续工作。考尔再也没有见过他。
“The days turned into weeks and then months,” she said recently at her home in the village of Fateh Nangal. “And my eyes kept searching for him.” “几天变成了几周，然后变成了几个月，”她最近在法塔赫南加尔村的家中说。“我一直盼望见到他。”
Ms. Kaur is far from alone in her misery. Tens of thousands of Indian women have been abandoned by husbands working abroad, according to government officials and activists, 遭受苦难的远不止考尔一个人。据政府官员和活动人士称，数万名印度女性被在国外工作的丈夫遗弃，根据当地社会习俗，
trapping many of them in their in-laws’ homes in accordance with local social customs, even for decades. 许多女性被困在婆家，有的长达数十年之久。
Some women who have been left behind by husbands are victims of the unfulfilled promises of changing circumstances. 一些被丈夫遗弃的女性是受丈夫没有兑现改变生活际遇的承诺所害。
Others, however, have been subjected to outright deceit, their families defrauded of dowries, honeymoon expenses and visa payments. 然而也有的是遭受了彻头彻尾的欺骗，她们的家人被骗取了嫁妆、蜜月费用和签证费用。
There are few specific legal remedies available to women whose husbands flee, and pursuing the men under more general laws can be difficult if they are abroad. 丈夫跑了，几乎没有专门的法律救济措施能帮助这些女性，如果男人在国外，根据相对一般性的法律追捕他们可能会很困难。
But eight women have filed a petition with India’s Supreme Court in an effort to press the government to enact policies to deal with what they called a widespread problem. 但有八名女性已向印度最高法院提交请愿书，试图敦促政府制定政策来解决她们称普遍存在的问题。
A former judge who headed a commission looking into the issue in Punjab said there were 30,000 such cases in that state alone. 一位领导了一个委员会在旁遮普调查该问题的前法官说，这样的案件仅在该邦就有3万起。
While Punjab, India’s only Sikh-majority state, is home to some of the country’s richest agricultural land, it has long struggled with unemployment and drug abuse. 旁遮普邦是印度唯一一个锡克教徒占多数的邦，拥有该国一些最肥沃的农田，但长期以来一直深受失业和吸毒问题的困扰。
Billboards promoting English-language training centers and visa consulting firms are evidence of an exodus abroad. Young men often force older relatives to sell land so they can emigrate. 宣传英语培训中心和签证咨询公司的广告牌是人口流失国外的证据。年轻人经常强迫年长的亲戚卖掉土地，以便他们可以移民。
One recent afternoon, at a roundabout in Kotli, a village surrounded by rice and sugar cane fields, 最近的一个下午，在稻田和甘蔗田环绕的科特利村，
a dozen older men sat under a tree, discussing the problems of distressed farmers: low incomes, mountains of debt and, in some cases, suicide. 十几名年长男性坐在环形路口的一棵树下，讨论陷入困境的农民的问题：低收入、巨额债务，还有一些人选择自杀。
“That is why everyone wants to fly out of Punjab to realize their dollar dream,” said Satnam Singh, 65, a retired schoolteacher, “and these women are partly a result of those aspirations.” “这就是为什么每个人都想飞出旁遮普邦来实现他们的美元梦想，”65岁的退休教师萨特南·辛格说，“这些女性的悲剧在一定程度上是这些愿望导致的。”
He said that some husbands wanted to honor the promise of taking their wives abroad, but that either unforeseen events or strict visa rules prevented them from doing so. 他说，有些丈夫想兑现带妻子出国的诺言，但不可预见的事件或严格的签证规定阻止了他们。
Activists and experts described a more troubling pattern, one that was also seen in interviews with 12 women. 活动人士和专家描述了一种更令人不安的情况，在对12名女性的采访中也看到了这种情况。
The situation, they said, often plays out like this: Parents arrange to marry their daughter off to a returning Indian. They pay a dowry, a practice long banned in India but still common. 他们说，情况通常是这样的：父母安排将女儿嫁给一个从国外回来的印度人。他们支付嫁妆，这种做法在印度早就被禁止，但仍然普遍存在。
A lavish wedding follows, with days of food and alcohol and dancing to Punjabi music. Then comes a honeymoon, also paid for by the bride’s family. 接下来进行一场奢华的婚礼，包括提供几天的餐食和酒饮，并随着旁遮普音乐跳舞。然后是蜜月，同样由新娘的家人支付。
The husband flies out, and the wife waits for a visa while living with her in-laws. The in-laws demand money to secure the visa, but it never arrives. 丈夫飞去国外，妻子住在公婆家，等待签证。婆家向妻子要钱以获取签证，但签证始终没拿到。
The wife, who is often illiterate, is kept under constant surveillance to keep control over her, damaging her psychologically. 妻子往往目不识丁，遭受婆家严密监视以对她加以控制，并且在心理上备受创伤。
外刊文章来源，纽约时报 2023年6月13日 They Married for a Life Abroad. But They Never Saw Their Husbands Again.
