The sleepy village was abuzz with activities. A marriage was being solemnized and the groom's family had come in for the engagement ceremony at the bride's house.
The groom was a 40 something man with tanned skin and clean shaven face. The bride was a 18 year old girl, dusky, demure and pretty. The dowry was fixed after much negotiation, the bride's father had two more daughters to marry off and four sons, with a small piece of agricultural land, as the main source of sustenance.
The wedding itself carried on for two days, with the entire village helping out the bride's parents. Finally it was time for the coy bride to leave her father's house with her husband. Her face reflected the ambivalent emotions that rose in her heart. She was happy with the little gold jewelry that she had received as gift from her in-laws and the zardozi sarees which women only got during their marriages. But somewhere she knew she was pained by the fact that she was leaving her familiar surroundings, leaving the place where she had grown up for so many years. She knew after marriage she could only visit her parents house if her brothers brought her from her in-laws or her husband accompanied her from there. Either way it would never be her choice.
A year had gone by. In the humdrum of village life, she was only talked about when women in the village gathered in the village pond or someones courtyard during spare time. Conversations always moved around how pretty she looked during her wedding.
One day news about her pregnancy trickled in. She was expecting and wanted to come to her parents house. Her husband apparently won't allow her to do so. He wanted to take her to the doctor in town and wanted to know the sex of the unborn child. Sensing that he might want to kill her unborn child if it was a girl, she fled to her parents house .
Utter commotion broke out in her parents house. Two of her brothers had in the meantime got married. They and their spouses and her father wanted her to go back to her husband. At any cost they didn't want her to be kicked out her in-laws home. She fought on, went from door to door in the village, she asked for help ..and pleaded not to be sent back before child birth.
After much cajoling by village elders she was allowed to stay back in her parents house. But there was no love and affection for her. She was treated as a liability and even her parents were eager to send her back as soon as possible.
She finally gave birth to a daughter. News went to her in-laws. No one came to see the newborn or the mother. It had been almost two years that she had been staying in her parents house. Now her brothers were not willing to feed her and her baby any longer. With her marriage, she had lost her right to be fed from the family land!
It was a bleak summer afternoon when her husband came to the village to take her and her daughter back home. She was visibly unhappy to leave her parents house. Clutching her baby daughter in her lap, she was in tears, "if you people ever come to know that I have committed suicide, pls know that I have been killed. I will never die on my own". Those were the last words before she left the village.
A couple of months passed by..and then the news came in. She had committed suicide by hanging herself. No news of her child was available.
Her husband, her in-laws, her parents, society..who were the killers? A decade has gone by, still we burn our brides for dowry..the killers are at large ...it's our mindset which should change..