Abandoned Brides

I have a lot to say today. And most of it is coming from an event that occurred last night. Unfortunately, I used to know a person back in high school who was probably the ultimate player. He wasn't the obvious kind of player. He was the sly player who used religion as a coating on his personality to appear as a genuine person. In a country like Canada, we have a mixture of people and religions. I am not gonna say that people are any less religious here than they are in our home country. But, I have definitely witnessed girls being impressed with guys who portray their religiosity. It's kind of like that emotional component that they look for in a man, in my opinion. It shows their soft side, i.e. a guy really committed to going to the Mandir.

Have they ever thought how deceiving this entire scenario may be? I have seen it with my very own eyes. For privacy and security concerns, I am not gonna list the name or details of this person. But he was big news in Brampton a few years ago. I have no personal opinion about him, his character or how I know him. No comments at all. I just wanna comment upon the content that was published in media about him.

The entire study was about how he went to India with his parents for a short span of time, let's say two weeks. He got married and came back. When he came back, he was still a part of our social circle, and none of us knew that he had been married. Only a few weeks later, I had graduated from high school and broken off all contact with the person. A year later, one of my friends who also happened to be friends with him sent me a journal article about him. It was about his marriage, and mainly a dowry issue.

In a nutshell, he got married to someone in India. It was a grand wedding, and a very fast one. He came back here and blackmailed the bride for cash and other monetary demands. And the wife happened to file a law suit against him in India. The entire issue was brought to a limelight as the wealthy family went to a police station and found many other women in the same situation. When asked about the whereabouts of the husbands of the abandoned brides, they replied with places like, "Jane and Finch, Brampton, Rexdale, Scarborough!"

Honestly speaking... the dowry issue in itself is so huge that I can write a book on it. But in this blog post, the only point I wanna make is about PARENTS! It's not about the bride or the groom. It's not about the NRI man or woman. We all know that the dollars or pounds convert into MANY rupees when we go to India. When others see us spend so lavishly is because the Indian currency gives us the advantage of multiplying it because foreign currency is worth more. You wouldn't find us spending crazy money on clothing here, as you would see in India. I mean, hello! 1 dollar = 53 Rupees. That's a lot of difference. People in India are not so naive anymore, but there are always exceptions. When they see people from foreign countries spending money so fast like a water flow - they think life here is easy. It excites them and makes the 'immigration' idea more thrilling! Whereas, we all know what the reality is.

Whether it is love or arranged, a marriage is a marriage. Families are very much involved in Indian weddings. And especially in India.. parents are so quick to give their daughters away to an NRI thinking that she will live an amazing life. Perhaps, a life that she may not be able to attain in India. You don't know the price those women have to pay. The kind of stigma that they have to live with, when the husbands never return. Or when the husbands come back here and start acting single again.

Dowry, in my opinion is a great sin. It has been outlawed and abandoned in many books, but not so much in reality. It is a very old Hindu practice and I am not proud of it as a Hindu. Even today, if people don't directly ask for cash, they still make demands that are pretty much dowry. Demands like, they want a HUGE banquet hall for the wedding because they wanna treat their guests right, or they want the girl's side of the family to pay for all the expenses, without even being a part of it. That too, in my opinion, is dowry.

I would like to humbly request the parents of these children in India to THINK carefully and INVESTIGATE before giving their daughters away. You raise them with so much love and when it comes time to make the most important decision of their life, you cannot make it in a jiffy just by seeing someone pull dollars out of their wallet. Immigration has become a huge trend in India within marriages. But, you have to sit down and kind of foresee the life your daughter is gonna have with a man you don't know.

As for the individual mentioned in this article, the wedding happened in less than a week. How do you get to know a person in one or two visits? That's how much I take to decide which dress I want to buy. Actually, when it comes time for my birthday.. I start going to the mall at least 5 days in advance to hunt for a good dress. What makes you think you can hunt for a good man within a day? Because he has a Canadian passport? Having worked in the immigration field, I learned a lot of things as well. I won't get into that. But all I wanna say is, a lot of deceiving happens these days in terms of marriages. Then, you end up with a divorcee status. And that divorcee status in India is a huge stigma itself.

Parents need to start thinking about their daughter's marriages with an emotional and rational sense. They should stop thinking politically, socially and economically. They should stop thinking that if I marry my daughter off with so and so, then his father and I can build good business relations. Or, if I marry my daughter off to so and so NRI, we have a chance to go abroad later. Why are these parents not afraid of betting their children's lives for economic means?

The law can only do so much to protect against these wrongs. It's more of a MORAL issue that needs correction in society. Within the PEOPLE in the society. The parents and children need to think together and act together in these issues. The children should get a say in what they want. The parents should think TWICE before giving their daughters away to someone they barely know. You live in a day and age where you don't even know your neighbors well enough to trust them. Then, how do you trust someone from a completely different country and a world of their known, that you have never witnessed. Marriage is a very sacred institution. I respect it so much. A lot of us do. So, let's not abuse it with backward practices like dowry and other economical exchanges for women.