Enemy Inside

I do remember Christiane Amanpour once cutting short a religious lady, who was her guest - perhaps last year - for using the word ‘evil spirit’ in her talk. Seeing my brother on the top post of church’s ranking and not surprisingly, he is surrounded by others like him, who keep using evil’s spirit and devils work. I have heard them using these words for the things that ever made any sense to me. Therefore, I know exactly why she rubbished that religious lady for using the word, saying this is just ‘extreme’ way of putting it. And then there are people who never gets tired of teaching their young children to stay away from strangers as they might pose potential threat in this way or that way. Nothing unnerves me than this belief.

Last week, I watched a movie, ‘the devil inside’.  Perhaps they call it thriller or dark twist, I am quite not sure about its genre. They were talking about the people, who were possessed by devil. And at times some of them were possessed by multiple and very powerful devils. Some of them were in mental hospital and some were kept in the basement of a house, tied on their own bed. The was a story told by Rosie about her mother and she was trying to capture those things in her camera with her team. In the process she met two priest, who helped her in her quest to find some answers. The document type story telling was interesting but, by nature I don't like stories that ends on suspense, which do not offer me any clue for what they were trying to understand.

As if by coincidence, this week I read a news about a father, who had paid 10,000/- to kill her teenage daughter. Because, Chandra Raut Barai was not happy that her sixteen year old daughter Rubi had eloped with Arun Kumar Sah, a seventeen year old boy, who also happened to be their neighbor. They ran to New Delhi on March ‘13. They were brought back to village and then the girl was sent to stay in her aunt’s place in India, for some time and then again she was arranged to stay in one of her uncle’s house just couple of days before the plan that took place in may 21, 2013, where he sent contract killers to kill her. Her body was charred beyond recognition and it had taken the investigating police officers seven days, just to identify her body.

Her mistake, she had fallen in love and then eloped with a boy whose caste was different than her.

Tens of thousands of people get killed every year around the world for choosing a life partner of their choice. The reason is not just inter caste marriage;  sometimes, the other party coming from different religion, status or from the ‘enemy family’ of the same society.

I watch an Indian crime reality show, regularly. A well to do family in Punjab, Jalandhar was miffed by the murder of their servant and at the same time loss of huge cash and jewelries from safe too. When investigation ended, it shocked the parents of Sagun, in fact, it was her plan to kill, all her family members, parents and her younger brother through contract killers.

The reason, she had fallen in love with a man in her village, who was poorer than her and was from ‘lower caste’ than that of hers. Sagun’s* father threatened Charan Singh to stay away from her, and then forced him to leave the village too.  While Sagun’s parents were busy searching for a suitable man for her, she still could not shake her head from her first love. Despite Charan Singh being a married man now, they were still in constant touch.  

When Sagun’s mother Jaspreet* went to see her daughter in prison cell and wanted to know, "why she wanted them to kill ? How come that much hatred in your mind for us ?" Sagun however seem not feeling guilty not even feeling remorse she responded in reply that, “you never wanted me to be happy with my choice. When you say ‘good man’ that meant your prestige and your status in society came first, then my happiness, when it comes to my life. Where is my happiness in all that ? where is my right to choose a man for my life ?”

She sure ended up in jail but she seemed more sorry for the death of an innocent man, Gurvinder Singh, her family servant, than the plan failing to kill  her family members.

In another case, that also happened in India, Sakchhi* and Piyush* was both married now and were living in different village. Before marriage they were romantically involved and wanted to marry but they belonging to very conservative society Sakchi was married to a different man.

One day, the mother-in-law of Sakchhi was murdered and father-in-law was brutally attacked. Police officers were baffled, how come the couple did not hear the help cry from the old couple, when they were sleeping in the next room ?

During investigation, it come to know that Sakchhi’s mother-in-law had sniffed that she was having an affair with another man. The other man happened to be her old flame. She had made her feel that this relationship was ‘filthy’ and ‘sinful act’ and you must stop it immediately. 

However, Sakchhi was not feeling guilty of her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, who had killed her mother-in-law. She admitted in front of police that she was not ahamed of her relationship with her old flame, love of her live. She was not ready to stop seeing him instead she wanted to marry him and then spend rest of her life now more than ever. She was sick of pretending to be good wife and mother to her two children aged six and three, with a dead soul inside her.

If children get marry they get killed by their own parent, if children don't get a chance to marry, then they do not hesitate to kill their own parents and siblings. And if they are forced to marry with others, the first love never seem to die, it just need a chance to take a flame and then again it has power to burn everything around their life, like the Sakchhi and Piyush did to her in laws.

Why a person cannot choose a life partner of his or her choice, when they are the one who has to spend life together ? Here in my side of continent, marriage is regarded as a family affair, and the truth is, it is; in every part of the world.  But, then, why they can't choose a partner on their own to start a family of their own ? How big prestige or status pressure should be, in an individual choice ? Does those pressure fit in constitutional right of a person to have a right to think and choose a life partner ?

I have always been a hard core believer of love marriage, as against arranged and my head always bow down to those, who went for love marriage to start a new family, with or without the permission of their loved ones. But, at the same time, love marriage has also created some enemies in our society. Surprisingly, this creates enemies inside the home first, then, it becomes burning issue in society; as people gets divided into two groups depending upon their own belief. What is important to understand here is, its not love marriage, but forcing new generation to choose life partner against their wish have invited crimes in society. Its more like, who can win the argument, even if, at the cost of taking or losing life of close family members.

So, when they say love for family, what do they mean ? Is this really the case of status, prestige, caste or religion only or there is more that lies in the depth of its belly ? Is this the personal happiness that has to surrender under family status ? When they say happiness of family, does this mean, that the new generation has to surrender their happiness to the older generation ? Really ? In all the above cases, it was the older generations, who opposed the new generation’s wish to choose life partner. Not surprisingly, the unthinkable followed once they felt, its do or die situation.

In the movie, ‘the devil inside’, no one knows who and what caused all the trouble to the people they were studying. At the end, all of the involved people became the victim of that unknown power. Perhaps, some of the things remains unexplained for centuries and may be this one is one of them. However, in  above cases; people involved may be refusing to take a good look into what exactly is the problem, that made their life miserable. Its not the love marriage that is root of all problems, in fact; its our society which is bit slow in accepting a person’s right to chose a life partner, which ultimately invites all the horrible incidents in our society that ails our nation too.

At this point, I remember the African proverb that says, when there is no enemy within the enemies outside cant not hurt you.

 * In the Indian crime cases all names are changed  to  protect privacy.