Love and Repercussions

Recently, I visited my native place and one of my neighbors there had a very interesting life-story to share. Before I get into the specifics of it, you need to know a little about my native.

I’m originally from rural hamlet in the edges of coastal Kanyakumari district. Things that are common here: Hard-core Christian values, a rich commitment to traditions and customs and (I’m not proud of this) an idiocy of narrow-mindedness. People who talk about feminism and equality of rights would rather set themselves on fire than to change the minds of my fellow villagers.

That said, let’s come back to my neighbor. I don’t want to name her, so let’s call her Sharon. Sharon completed her M.E. in engineering and got herself a really good job as a professor at a respected college in Nagercoil. Her parents are very rich and needless to say, they were hunting a son-in-law who was as rich and as worthy as they were. Sharon’s parents were very active church members and it goes without saying that they brought up Sharon instilling her with the pious and important Christian values.

So, as you can guess, she fell in love with a colleague, let’s name him, Murugan. Yes, he was a Hindu and he worked as a peon at the college. And like in a Telegu movie, he happened to be from a family of limited means, with an educational qualification of third standard. The news of this fantasy love story reaches Sharon’s household and they vehemently disagree with this “unethical and immoral” pairing. Her father’s account is that, and I quote, “I would have allowed her to marry him if he’d studied fifth grade and was a Christian, but a Hindu husband for my daughter is just unacceptable.”

And so, like a Tamil movie, the lovers eloped and got married. Sharon was thrown out of her house and her estranged parents no longer want to have anything to do with her. Murugan’s parents were, thankfully, more generous and accepted the couple under their roof.

Unfortunately, the inter-colleague love story reached the ears of the college management. Traditional as the people are, they fired Sharon, but allowed Murugan to keep his job. (Note that the girl was blamed and fired, the man was warned and unpunished). From here on out, everything that Sharon encountered was the harsh reality of the life she’d chosen.

Murugan’s salary amounted to Rs. 4000 p.m. It had to support his wife and his parents. And so, with her educational qualification, Sharon sought to take up a job. She got an offer to work in a small IT company that offered to pay her Rs. 6000 p.m. She was excited to take up the job, when her husband insisted that the job was too basic to be worth her post-graduate engineering degree. She got yet another job at another company that offered her Rs. 8000 p.m. She had to turn that down because her husband believed that it wasn’t safe for her as there weren’t enough women working at the office.

It would take an idiot to not notice a pattern here. Each time she got an offer that paid her substantially more money than her husband’s job; she was forced to turn it down. A man who supposedly loves her can’t bear to take the fact that his wife earns more than he can. And now, 18 months later, they have a 6-month baby to take care of (something they just couldn’t wait to happen).

I don’t what to do, she says, I feel like I’m cut off from the world. Her laptop was her only means to access the Internet and it got fried. Repairing it would cost 2000 bucks, that’s half her family’s monthly income. Applying for a job meant filling out an application form and acquiring the corresponding learning materials to write the entrance exam. That required money; money she didn’t have.

It’s not just her career that is crippled. A sincere Christian at heart, she wanted to go the church on a Sunday. Her husband diverted her to ask his mother. And she says no. Now, Sharon lives a boxed-in and useless life with a no-good husband, sacrificing her religious beliefs and her soaring career.

She might not say it out-loud, but she’s reeling in the choices she made; the choices that have potentially destroyed her life. All she ever did was love.

Was it truly love? Was Murugan’s compassion driven by the possibility that “netting” her could mean getting his hands on her father’s money? A plan that went horribly wrong and leaves him with no choice but to put up with this innocent and inconspicuous woman for the rest of his life.

Who do you blame? The young lovers who were careless? The management that was gender-biased? The in-laws who are heartless? The girl’s parents who are soul-less? The girl who have up her life in exchange for the sheer pleasure of love? The husband who cares more about his ego and arrogance than the welfare of his family? Who do you blame?

People on social media take very less time to criticize that parents always disapprove when she falls in love with a guy. A girl’s life is like a glass frame; in the blink of an eye, a single crack, a single smudge, a single mark would expose it to criticism and disapproval from everyone who can see it. No parent would truly want that for their daughter. No daughter would, in reality, want it for herself.

How much ever one might preach the right to equality, when it comes to a broken a marriage (including a child) it is the woman that is affected the most, because no mother would want to abandon her child with a man she doesn’t want to live with. At least, no sane mother would. So, where does it leave our society?

Where does it leave all those girls who are in blissful relationships that their family disapproves? What does life offer them, if their family abandons them? Do they truly know the man they’re in love with? Did Sharon know that Murugan was a no-good, egotistical maniac with a self-serving selfish disdain for womanhood?

I absolutely do not believe every family-disapproved marriage turns out this way. But, some of them do; so when do you know its love? And what do you do when you learn it isn’t real and it happens to be too late?