By Alok Joshi
Silence is more eloquent than speech. Not always.
Whether it was murder or suicide, a young daughter has lost her life. The legal battles, forensic reports and media circus surrounding her untimely death will dominate the news cycle for a few weeks, but the real societal failure happened quietly behind closed doors long before the case reached the Supreme Court or the CBI.
For the past few weeks, the tragic death of 32-year-old actor-model Twisha Sharma has filled our screens and news feeds. We watch a familiar script unfold: conflicting forensic theories, allegations of dowry harassment, CCTV timelines analysed threadbare, high-profile legal battles and intense investigations.
But beneath the loud demands for systemic justice lies a quiet, devastating truth that legal drafts will never quite capture. A young, promising life full of vitality has been abruptly cut short. And while the courts dissect the medical and digital evidence, society must dissect its own conscience.
In a few months, the media storm will inevitably recede. The headlines will find a new tragedy, and public memory will fade—until another daughter, in another city, suffers a similar fate. If we wish to break this horrific cycle, we must look at the lessons staring back at us from Twisha’s untimely death.
Reports suggest that before the tragedy, Twisha sent desperate signals of distress, expressing that she felt “trapped”. Yet, like countless young women across our country, her cries for help were likely met with that ubiquitous, deeply entrenched counsel: “Adjust. Give it time. Compromise.”
It is a phrase passed down through generations, packaged as parental wisdom or marital guidance. But we need to call it what it truly is: a dangerous deflection of responsibility.
When a daughter reaches out to her strongest support system—her parents, her brother, her close friends—and says she cannot breathe under the weight of mental or physical torture, telling her to “adjust” is not conflict resolution. It is an evacuation of support. It sends a chilling message to a woman in distress: Your emotional and physical survival is secondary to social appearances.
We have raised our daughters to be independent, educated, and ambitious. We celebrate their professional milestones and encourage them to conquer the world. Yet, the moment they enter a matrimonial home, society expects them to retroactively shrink themselves into silent endurance. We trap them in a cultural paradox where exiting a toxic environment is treated as a greater failure than suffering within it.
This is a collective wake-up call for us all:
For Parents
A daughter’s mental health and physical safety must always outweigh societal expectations or the fear of “what people will say”. When she says she is unhappy or unsafe, believe her the first time. This is serious; it is not just “drama”. Parents still consider daughters as “paraya dhan”, unfortunately. Mothers innocently advise their daughters to manage their “new home”. But where is a girl’s home? Where does she belong?
The doors of her paternal home must always be wide open, not as a temporary refuge, but as an unconditional sanctuary.
For Friends and Kin
Pay attention to the subtle shifts in language. “I’m trapped” or “I don’t want to live like this” are not casual vents; they are distress signals. We must move past the habit of minding our own business when a loved one’s life is on the line.
For Society
We must dismantle the archaic belief that longevity is the sole metric of a successful marriage. Sometimes it is better to be happily single than unhappily married. A marriage sustained at the cost of a human being’s dignity, sanity or life is a failure.
Twisha Sharma’s death cannot just remain a case file or a television debate. Let it be the moment we resolve to stop telling our daughters to fit into spaces that are crushing them. Let us build a society where a woman’s cry for help is met with immediate rescue, not a sermon on endurance.
Because the cost of our advice to “adjust” is simply too high to bear.
(Alok Joshi is a Dehradun-based Management professional, Corporate Trainer, Interview coach, Image Consultant, Motivational Speaker, Author of three bestselling books and a freelance writer. He has a multi-cultural background and has worked in top management positions in global companies across many countries including India, Sudan, Middle-East and China.)
