We live in a dichotomous society. On the one hand mainstream cinema and the serials we are addicted to project ad nauseam the power and beauty of young love. On the other hand, when our own young ones fall in love, we are filled with misgiving. And when the partner an adult child has chosen is deemed to be unsuitable, the misgiving turns to sorrow followed by anger and hatred leading to violence and sometimes even death.

Like in the case of Rizwanur Rahman from Kolkata, who one morning was found dead on the railway tracks. Rizwanur, a 30- year-old Muslim man from a middle class family died because he married Priyanka Todi, the 23-year-old-daughter of an influential and wealthy Hindu industrialist. They were both adults who had the legal right to marry whomsoever they wished.
And yet they were hounded and harassed by not just her family but even the police. They were followed and threatened by anti-social elements, detective squads and influential relatives and friends of Priyanka’s father. Finally, unable to bear the pressure, Priyanka went back to her parental home, carrying a written assurance from her uncle saying she would be allowed to return. A couple of days later, Rizwanur was found dead.

How did he die? Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? Who was responsible for his death?
There were protest marches. The police chief was transferred. The CBI was called. Rizwanur’s case became national news. But the bottom line remained the same. Rizwanur died because he dared to marry the girl he loved.
All sane voices across the country condemned the death of this young husband who had been married for less than a month. And yet there was that niggling question which worried many parents. What would they have done if their child decided to marry a partner whom they deemed inappropriate? Not had him killed, of course. But to what extent would they have gone to separate her from him?

Rizwanur was educated. He taught graphic design at a multimedia institute in Kolkata. But he lived in a small, tin-roofed house in a teeming colony. He was devoted to his widowed mother. Certainly there were many who would have considered him an eligible bachelor.
His 23-year-old-student Priyanka was the pampered daughter of one of the richest and most socially prominent Hindu industrialists of Kolkata. She lived in a palatial house and by her own accounts lived an ‘overprotected’ life. Could two lives have been more different?
Yet, when Priyanka and Rizwanur met at the institute, love blossomed. She defied her parents and walked out of her house empty-handed to marry the man of her choice and was welcomed by his family.

Her influential father could do nothing legally as they were two adults who had got married in court. But he used all the clout he had to separate them. And finally he achieved his goal. At what cost? Will Priyanka ever be happy again? Or does her happiness not matter at all as long as the family ‘honour’ is saved? Is honour killing an acceptable form of punishment even in a modern metropolis like Kolkata?
As I said, we are a dichotomous society. How many times would we have seen such scenes enacted on the silver screen? How many times would we have sat shedding copious tears over the fate of young and innocent lovers being hounded by parents blinded by their own notions of status and suitability? How many times would we have cheered as the young couple went off into the horizon armed with nothing but their love and faith in each other? Or lay dying in each other’s arms.

And yet, if it happens to our own children, we realise the difference between reel and real life. Even as the CBI investigated Rizwanur’s death, the Chiranjeevi soap opera started unfolding on our newspapers and TV screens. Chiranjeevi, as everyone south of the Vindhyas knows, is the mega superstar of Telugu cinema. A man who would have many times over portrayed the unsuitable lover on the silver screen. Yet, one day, his 19-year-old younger daughter Srija eloped with her 22-year-old boyfriend Sirish. She eloped, she said, because her father found her lover unsuitable and had kept her under house arrest to prevent her from meeting him. Priyanka’s father had used detectives to dig up Rizwanur’s old girlfriend in a last ditch attempt to get his daughter back. In the Srija episode, an old ‘kidnapping’ case against Sirish surfaced. But the comparisons end there. Rizwanur is dead. Sirish and Srija are fine and living under police protection. Her father has publicly said he wants his daughter to be happy although he hasn’t exactly welcomed her home with open arms.

Parents have a right to voice their concerns over children opting for spouses whom they might consider unsuitable. But what constitutes unsuitability? Caste? Religion? Social status? Age? Educational qualifications? Alcholism? Drug abuse? Unacceptable social behaviour? It’s a very subjective thing.
Suppose Rizwanur had been the son of another rich industrialist, but of the wrong caste or religion, would he have been more acceptable to the Todis? Would his family then have traded clout for clout and pressure for pressure and kept the Todis at bay?
Would Priyanka’s parents have been more comfortable marrying her off with a huge dowry and a fantasy wedding as long as the boy was deemed suitable in terms of religion, caste and social status? Would they then have hired detectives to hunt out old girl friends? Would they have probed his social antecedents to make sure he was not an alcoholic or philanderer?
Probably not because money, as they say is a great leveller.
We come back once more to the question of what matters most. Your child’s happiness? Your social status? Your honour? Honour killings still occur in parts of our country when adult children marry persons whom their families have rejected.

Yes, but I would not kill my own child, you might say. But to what extent would you go to prevent that child from marrying a person who you think is totally wrong?
A friend who comes from a very educated and emancipated family told me of her reaction when her daughter decided to get married to a man of her choice. “I certainly did not accept it straight away,” she said. “They might have fallen in love, but the families did not fall in love with each other!” The two families had to come to terms with their social, cultural and other differences and finally agree that the happiness of the couple was of primary importance.
Not as easy as it sounds. Parents always feel they know best when it comes to the mental well-being of their young ones. And society agrees. If Chiranjeevi had married his daughter off to a man of his choice, no one would have said she was too young to be married. But when she eloped with a man she singled out, most people reacted by saying she was too young to know what was good for her.
So where does a parent draw the line? What distinguishes interference from genuine love and concern? Can parents listen in on personal conversations, read letters and e-mail or send detectives behind their children under the guise of protecting them? Should parents arrange marriages for their children against their wishes ‘for their own good’? Or, should they just cut that mythical umbilical cord at some point of time and let their children make their own decisions for better or for worse?

What about the children themselves? Do they not have any responsibilities toward the families who nurtured them? As a young woman engineer told me the other day, “I wasn’t exactly thinking of my family or his when we fell in love. It happened. I would have been a fool to deny it.” Since she and her husband-to-be were both independent, earning adults, they defied their respective families and got married. They refused to succumb to the usual parental blackmail. Her father said he would never be able to get her younger sister married. His mother threatened to commit suicide. When they walked out on their parents, both parents lost not only their beloved children, but also an important source of income.
A young man from a well-off family who walked out of his house to marry the woman of his choice said he found it very difficult at first. He hated being parted from the parents he loved and could not adjust to living in a small flat and doing all his personal work himself. Several years and two children later, his parents accepted him and his family, but in the interim they had all lost out on a lot. His relationship with his parents was no longer the same and his children never quite took to their grandparents.
Even as I write this piece, Sweety Tater, the 19-year-old-daughter of an industrialist from Mumbai is in the news for having married Rajesh Shaw, a technician from a diagnostic lab in Kolkata, against her parents’ wishes. They, too, were threatened by the police and subjected to violence. And as I watch the scenes of ugly anger captured by a hidden camera and shown on TV, I wonder can parents really be so vengeful towards their own children. Children whom they nurtured, loved and raised.