I read an article about this 17 year old Telugu girl, Priya Reddy, who was strangled by her father and younger brother. Apparently the family suspected that she was going to elope with her Dalit lover, a 20 year-old illiterate youth, in spite of their objections. Her father and lover are both labourers and her mother runs a tea stall out of a push cart. The girl had just graduated to Std XII in some private junior college. The report said that the parents wanted to attend the last rites of the girl but the police did not allow them.
Certainly not the only killing of this type?countless families kill their daughters for countless reasons, not the least of which is their failure to obey the families? wishes in the choice of a mate. The idea of having a child so we can own the person and make demands of all kinds is of course inalienable to most cultures, especially ours. All that stuff about letting things go if you love them is nonsense. Try letting go of your favourite shirt or cup and see how you feel.
Now imagine letting go of this kid who has taken so much of you over these years. You?ve kept the kid warm, safe and well fed as a baby, comforting it as it cries for all sorts of reasons. You?ve kept the kid safe and happy, buying toys and whatever it needs and preventing it from hurtling down the stairs or running into traffic. You?ve kept the kid in school, making sure it gets an education and can mingle with its friends. You?ve fretted over its marks, friends, injuries, illnesses, future?.
And the kid reaches the stage where it(well, he/she) says they have rights, they need freedom, they are their own person. Right? Right. We too said the same things and people will say these things long after we have gone. But what to do? One camp says you have to let kids make their own mistakes, live their lives. The only lessons you learn are the ones that burn you. The other camp says we have to protect these kids from their own inexperience and stupidity. Otherwise why call yourself a parent? There are some mini-camps in between that say things like you have to lecture the kids and bring them up to know right from wrong to decrease their inexperience and stupidity, and then let them decide.
Maybe Priya?s parents tried to reason with her. I would have. Why? Not because the boy was a Dalit but because he was illiterate(my reason, of course, not theirs). Why? What if he was illiterate because he was Dalit? Many Dalits are working hard for an education, especially in urban and semi-urban areas. So why didn?t this boy? That?s what I would have worried about. That the fellow was illiterate because he simply hadn?t applied himself, had wanted to enjoy himself, didn?t have guidance to put him on the right track and now, all he could do was be a labourer. What?s wrong with being a labourer? Wasn?t the girl?s father also a labourer?
Yes, BUT the poor parents were doing a lot to put this girl through college and there was the murderous younger brother too. They would have known how hard it is to not be educated and were doing a lot to correct this for their kids. And what does the girl do? She wants to marry a labourer. So what? Let her. Tell her to get lost and don?t pay for her education any more. Let her drop out of college. Let her live with the labourer and get pregnant and then run her own tea or flower stall to put her kids through school and college. Maybe the labourer will strike it rich because of some very cinematic twist of fate and they will all live happily ever after.
Personally, this option of telling the girl to get lost would have been the best option but the father and brother acted out of their patriarchal mindset of?owning the girl?. But that the parents asked to attend her last rites is the pathetic part?what the father must be going through! What a world we live in! When I read such things, I am angry with the society around us for being such a colossal nuisance to everybody with all these rigid barriers. Instead of facilitating life, the aim is always to see how to make life miserable for people. But I am also angry with families who give into this nonsense and behave in a such barbaric manner. And sometimes, above all, I am also angry with these kids.
One would think that having lost their lives, they at least deserve our sympathy. But I blame the stupidity that these kids display in not understanding the people around them, in not being able to adapt themselves to survive in this mess, and when they know they cannot adapt, that they don?t learn how to flee the situation. In some of these cases, the youngsters know that they won?t be allowed to marry so they meet each other secretly for a while. If they are not killed by then or married off forcibly, they elope. Some of these fools have then returned to the same village from which they fled, when they have then been butchered by the patiently waiting families.
The two cases of Rizwanur Rahman in West Bengal and Ilavarasan in Tamil Nadu ran along very similar lines, though the latter was associated with a lot more communal violence. The girls who eloped with these young men, eventually returned to their own families under duress. Both the young men were ultimately?found dead?-near railway tracks. Why did these youngsters do all this? Why weren?t they mature enough to foresee the consequences when they had lived with their families and communities all their lives? Was this love or just a dangerously stupid attraction? Was the love worth all this violence and misery? And why is it that these higher caste females fall in love with the lower caste males? Don?t the higher caste males fall in love with lower caste females or are they too status-conscious and worldly or is it easier for them to cheat and move on?
I think a lot of this is being fanned by cinema. Almost all of our cinema is based on these mismatched love affairs, some stunts to irritate the lovers, several songs to show off the lovers in beautiful settings, and then they are magically united or in a few cases, they die. Why don?t our filmmakers ever write a story that has NO romance in it? Just talk about one of the many scams that?s happening around us or social problems or possible solutions etc. Don?t glorify romance. Stop driving it into these youngsters? heads that romance is cool and is necessary for life. Stress achievement, hard work, innovativeness. But I suppose there are so many vested interests in keeping things the way they are that all this is not practical for people looking to make money off a public that wants only an escape from reality.
So as CSNY sing in?Teach Your children?
You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself because the past is just a goodbye
Teach your children well; their father?s hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams, the ones they picked, the ones you?ll know by
Don?t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh - and know they love you
And you of tender years can?t know the fears that your elders grew by
And so please help them with your youth; they seek the truth before they can die
Teach your parents well; their children?s hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams; the ones they picked, the ones you?ll know by
Don?t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh - and know they love you.
