Honour Killing

Marriages in India are a BIG deal. When you marry, who you marry, whether you stay married to that person or not, when to have kids is all NOT in the hands of the two people getting married.

Generally what happens:

Girls: She is born.
Half the times the parents are happy and half the time they are not.If they are not happy, people sympathize.If by chance they are happy, they are fed with so many notions of how a girl can ruin their reputation in society that they begin to feel scared.As the girl is growing up, they make a promise to themselves that their daughter will be different.They begin to put restrictions on her and as she grows, the restrictions increase.Till the time she reaches a marriageable age, they become paranoid and nothing matters to them more than marrying her off in a good family. (Of course a good family has a thousand parameters.)
         

Now, in any other part of the world it is considered quite normal if a young woman has an interest in some guy,but not here.In India such news is greeted with as much grief as a death in the family or maybe a rape.The girl is made to understand how the guy she has chosen is unacceptable or how it is not her place to make a decision.
         

If she quietly listens and agrees to whatever she is being told, then the situation may end with a few slaps, a grieving mother, an angry father and brothers and a hurriedly arranged marriage which may or may not keep her happy.( divorce is still not a very acceptable procedure in Indian households).But if she doesn't agree, then it results in beatings, scaring off the guy and his family or maybe the girl eloping.This is the stage when the families become sworn enemies of their own children and cut off the ties with them. In extreme cases(which are not very rare) the couple are searched for and when found are killed off to save the family's honor in the society.

The Taboos of India

Marriage

If we have to name a few taboos of India, Marriage surely has made a place for itself. Unlike many of the developed countries, Marriage still remains the pivot point for the Indian culture. The epidemic called marriage claims thousands of lives every year in India. The elaborate pomp and show hides the toxic web of dowries, expectations, caste, status, money, relationships and ego feeding off of the men and women.

Getting married in India is not an easy business, it follows the same route many of the times, if not always.

         1.Parents start telling their children(especially girls) that the ultimate motive of life is to get married.
         2.They are fed with this bug of marriage at a very young age so that they can't think anything beyond marriage.
         3.They are made to qualify in every aspect that is most in demand in the market of marriage( be it a college degree or the new hairstyle).
         4.When the age comes, parents start looking for a suitable match.
         5.Suitable match is also not very easily found considering the thousands of parameters that are to be considered : The person should have a strong familial background, The caste, religion, should be same, The gotras however cannot be same, the boy needs too be tall, the girl needs to be beautiful, the boy should have a job while the girl should only have a degree that can be flaunted, the boy must touch feet of the elders, the girl must cover her head, the boy must have a high income, the girl must be a virgin, the girl parents must agree with the boys parents, the boys parents must say no once to a dowry but then later accept everything with a smile.
Given above are only a few denominators that 'help' in finding the suitable match.
      6. The next step is finding out that your son/daughter already has someone in their life.
      7. This is followed by a horrid reaction of surprise and heartbreak that ends by breaking up the  relationship which has 'spoilt' the child.
      8. Now we have a set of happy parents and a brooding bride and groom who want to be with someone else.
      9. The girl's parents become extremely happy and take loans to marry her off in style.
      10. After the marriage, however the boy's parents start discovering faults in the same girl they had pressurized their son to marry and ask him to leave her.
      11. If the girl tries to talk to her parents, they gently push her back to the same house saying that now they are not their family and she needs to adjust.

In this way the girl and boy keep suffering and accept that they have to stay together. In their empathy for each other, they find affection and thus remain happily married.

The Golden Dawn

You can find magic in each and every little thing of this Earth. All you need to have, is the vision and will. I found mine in writing. Writing for me has been something that doesn't belong with me but to something much higher and greater. It is like the scent of a shimmering flower that no one ha seen, a scent that once in a while enters my body to make my soul come alive. It is like the scarlet streaks in a golden dawn that make it all the more graceful and signify the power of the great beyond. 

When I write, I am not me. I am not that 21 years old girl that can't stop blabbering, or that naughty self that cracks jokes in every situation or the one that doesn't mind acting stupid. In that instance of time I am something else. My soul is being poured out onto a sheet of paper through my fingers and it is as effortless and natural as playing a piano or dancing to the beats of one's own heart. In that moment, I am the soul. The soul that unites me to the elements of the Universe.

In that moment I am everything and everything is I.