Honour killings: Killing an honour?

Honour killing is back on the headlines. I have come across several stories of honour killings, not just in the developing world, but one also in the UK! So here goes something on them. Mind you I’m giving details of very few incidents here, the ones which hit the headlines, god knows how many more have gone unreported.
I don’t think that the actual figure of honour killing is available with anyone, neither is there any authority at the national or provincial level to monitor the act and collect the details in every country. The numbers are only collected from police and media reports. But what about the cases that go unreported?

Honour killing is a compoundable offence in which the parties -- accused and victim family -- can reach a compromise and settle the issue. As the accused of the honour killing is often a family member -- father, brother or husband -- of the victim, he easily earns pardon by the kin of the victim or the complainant. In such killings, parents should pursue the case, but as both the victim and accused were related, the killer gains an advantage.

Palestine
Let me begin with Palestine. To the shock of all, the man killed slit the throat of his wife in the market, in front of all. Why? Just because she sought divorce from her abusive husband of 10 years!

In 2012, 12 women were killed by relatives, including three in "family honour" cases. Those include suspected adultery and similar cases. The new addition is a man killing his wife brutally in the market.
Nancy Zaboun, a 27-year-old mother of three, was reportedly regularly beaten by her 32-year-old husband Shadi Abedallah, at times so severely that she had to be hospitalized. Even then, Abedallah was never arrested, police only made him sign pledges that he would stop beating his wife. And what’s even more surprising is the fact that Abedallah himself is a former police officer and he killed her after attending a hearing in her divorce case.

Women might have scored some breakthroughs in traditional Palestinian society in recent years, including gaining a greater role in public life, but tribal laws still remain strong, and violence against women is generally viewed by police as an internal family matter.

The case might have reverberated across Palestinian society because of the brutality of the attack, but violence against women is overlooked here, as in other parts of the Arab world, and women's rights activists say abusive husbands are rarely punished.

On July 18, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) released a statement, which said a 19-year-old girl was murdered overnight in a refugee camp in Gaza City by her brother and father in an apparent "honour killing". “The body of the girl, identified only by the initials "WMQ," arrived at the city's Shifa Hospital at approximately 2:00 am (2300 GMT on Tuesday),” The Egyptian Gazette reported. "Palestinian police spokesman Major Ayman Batniji told PCHR that police opened an investigation immediately and arrested her father and her brother who both confessed to committing the crime in the context of 'family honour'," it said.

Honour killings, in which a family member murders a relative who is perceived to have ruined the family's reputation, occur periodically in the Palestinian territories.

Last year, following the murder of a woman in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas pledged to amend a decades-old law under which those citing "honour" as a defence could expect to receive a jail sentence of no more than six months.

India:
Honour killings are not new to India. They have been on the headlines very often. On July 14, a man was murdered for falling in love with an upper caste girl. Elango was murdered by a gang of men who opposed his falling in love with Selvalakshmi, 18, a dominant caste girl in Erode. Selvalakshmi’s brother Saravanan, who wanted to save the ‘honour’ of the family, arranged his friends to ‘finish off’ Elango, a dalit. His friends brought Elango to Muneerpallam secretly and killed him. Now Saravanan’s gang has been put behind bars. Selvalakshmi is depressed and sees no hope for her future. “This is not an isolated case. Many Elangos and Selvalakshmis are facing threat from their families for marrying out of their caste,” reported The Asian Age.

A local court of Badaun in Lucknow on July 30 awarded death penalty to seven members of a family for killing a couple in Fareedpur village in May 2006. The police, in its investigation, found that Deen Dayal and Aneeta, both in their early twenties, had been victims of ‘honour killing’. All those convicted belonged to the girl’s family and included her father Nathu.

A local court in Sonipat in Haryana on August 1 awarded life imprisonment to a woman and her two sons for killing her 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old niece in the name of honour. Chanchal and her cousin Raj Kumari were killed after their grandmother caught them with their 16-year-old cousin around two years back. The judge also slapped Rs 10,000 fine each on the convicts -- Vidya Devi, Kumari's mother, Chand Varma and Suraj Varma, reported The Times of India. They would undergo an additional 10-month imprisonment if they fail to pay the fine. A police officer said the "affair'' infuriated Vidya and her two sons, who took the girls to a secluded place and strangled them to death. They then threw their bodies into a canal near Badwasni village in Sonipat on June 26, 2010.

Pakistan:
Earlier in Pakistan, the honour killings were mostly isolated to northern Sindh, southern Punjab and some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan in Pakistan, but now the capital police are registering cases regularly especially in its rural areas, reported Dawn. At least six incidents of honour killings were reported over the last two-and-a-half months in the country.

On July 3, a man was found dead from a nullah at G-11/2. The victim, Mohammad Bashir, and his cousin Ahsanullah, natives of district Kohat, persuaded two local girls to elope with them and did a court marriage a year back. A Jirga -- a tribal assembly of elders -- was called which barred the couple from entering the village. In response, the couple migrated to Islamabad and started living at Merabadi in Golra. On July 13, the victim received a call on his mobile from his in-laws and immediately left the house. Later, he was found strangled in the nullah.

On July 6, a man killed his wife and her alleged paramour in the area of Shahzad town. Later, the accused, who escaped from the spot after the killing, surrendered to the police. The accused told the police that when he returned home on July 6, he found his bedroom locked from the inside, but his wife was in the kitchen. Later, he found a man inside his bedroom and lost his temper and killed the duo. He further claimed that around a month ago, he had returned home and found his bedroom locked. Later, his wife opened it and he saw the man escaping from another door. He rebuked his wife over her illicit relation with the man and in response she left the house. A week later, she returned on his insistence, but did not abandon the illicit relationship.

On July 19, a man killed his sister ‘MB’, 19, on pretext of “honour” at his house in Kirpa. The victim’s family was trying to convince her to marry a man of their choice, but she repeatedly refused. When asked for the reason, she disclosed that she had married secretly. Over the disclosure, her brother killed her with a pistol and escaped. Later, the victim’s father lodged a complaint against his son and the police registered a murder case.

Afghanistan:
An Afghan man killed his two teenage daughters when they returned home four days after running away with a man in a southern village, police said on July 19. The father, who shot the girls, has been detained on murder charges in Nad Ali district in the southern province of Helmand, a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency, provincial police spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhang told AFP. “He killed two of his daughters. His daughters had run away with a young man four days ago. When they returned home their father killed them,” Farhang said. Police have issued an arrest warrant for the young man, who is said to be working as an interpreter with NATO forces in the southern province, reported The Nation.

So-called “honour killing” is a common practice in Afghanistan. The Taliban recently publicly executed a young woman in a village near Kabul after she was accused of adultery. The execution was widely condemned internationally after a shocking video of the killing surfaced in Afghan media. It showed a crowd cheering as a man shot the woman with a rifle.

The UK:
It is not that only developing countries and Muslim-dominated countries are haunted by honour killings, it happens even in the developed countries, even in the West, even in the UK! A jury in the UK has begun considering its verdicts in the trial of a couple accused of murdering of their daughter because they believed she brought “shame on the family”, reported The Independent. Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife Farzana, 49, of Liverpool Road, Warrington, Cheshire, are alleged to have suffocated their 17-year-old daughter Shafilea with a plastic bag. The 10-week trial heard evidence from Shafilea's sister Alesha, who claimed that she and the rest of her siblings witnessed the murder at the family home. Taxi driver Ahmed denies murder, saying Shafilea ran away from home in the middle of the night and he never saw her again. Farzana also denies murder but told the told the jury she saw her husband beat her eldest child and she believes he killed her.

Study on honour killings:
Worldwide, most honour killings take place in Muslim countries -- Pakistan, in particular. But the northern parts of Hindu-majority India also are plagued by the phenomenon. Official estimates suggest at least 1,000 honour killings take place in each country every year. The actual numbers likely are many times that.
As Phyllis Chesler and Nathan Bloom wrote in the Summer 2012 edition of the Middle East Quarterly, “honor killing is the premeditated murder of a relative (usually a young woman) who has allegedly impugned the honor of her family.”

In the case of Pakistani honour killings, the researchers found, three motives prevailed: punishment for “illicit relationships” (often involving a woman who elopes with a mate of her own choosing); “contamination by association” (in which family member are killed for the moral sins of their sister or daughter); and “immoral character,” in which the woman or girl (the average victim age is 22) is punished for going unveiled, or otherwise flouting the standards of dour piety expected of Muslim women in backwards societies.

In Indian honour killings, these factors sometimes are present. But the dominant motivation is something entirely different: caste. This difference in honour-killing motivation is tied to a difference in the murder-sanctioning decision-making process. In Pakistan, the killings are embarked upon as small-scale family conspiracies. In India, on the other hand, caste-based councils called khap panchatays explicitly order the killings -- despite the fact that inter-caste and intra-gotra marriage has been legal in India for over half a century.

The difference in Indian/Pakistani honour-killing motivations also leads to another striking statistical gap between the two nations: “In 40% of the cases, Indian Hindus murdered men, while Pakistani Muslims murdered men only 14% of the time in Pakistan,” the authors reported. “The higher percentage of male victims in India underscores the fact that Hindu honor killings are more often about caste purity than sexual purity. While sexual purity is traditionally a female responsibility, the religious mandate to maintain strict boundaries between castes is an obligation for all Hindus, both male and female.”

From a policy-making perspective, this analysis suggests that there is more hope in India than in Pakistan for eliminating the practice of honour killing.

India has unambiguously denounced honour killings and is keen to crack down on the khap panchayats’ stubborn grip on popular attitudes in northern India. In particular, a bill drafted in 2011 stipulates that: “It shall be unlawful for any group of persons to gather, assemble or congregate with the… intention to deliberate, declare on, or condemn any marriage or relationship such as marriage between two persons of majority age in the locality concerned on the basis that such conduct or relationship has dishonored the caste or community or religion of all or some of the persons forming part of the assembly or the family or the people of the locality concerned.” Unfortunately, the fate of the legislation remains uncertain -- because the khap panchayats still have political sway.

In Pakistan, the situation is worse, because national authorities don’t even control large swathes of their own country’s northern borderlands -- let alone the murderous intra-familial dynamics of the tribes that inhabit these areas.

Political Islam also is a complicating factor in Pakistan. Like the Hindu faith, Islam provides no explicit religious justification for honour killings. Yet the perceived imperative of “protecting” Muslim women from the “impurities” of the West has become wrapped up with the Islamist political project, and so has blurred into a quasi-religious justification for honour killings.

In 2009, the authors note, “Pakistan’s National Assembly passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, which strengthened legal protections against domestic violence for women and children. However, the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body charged with assessing whether laws are consistent with Islamic injunctions, issued a statement saying the bill ‘would fan unending family feuds and push up divorce rates.’ After this, the bill was held up in the Pakistani senate and allowed to lapse.”

Moreover: “Under Sharia-based provisions of Pakistan’s judicial system, murderers can buy a pardon by paying blood money (dyad) to the victim’s family. Since the family of honor killing victims are nearly always sympathetic to the honor killer as well as complicit to some degree, getting a pardon is usually just a formality. Women’s rights organizations in Pakistan have pressed parliament to disallow the practice of blood money in honor killing cases, but conservative Islamist groups have blocked the needed legislation.”

From a strictly Western point of view, the most interesting conclusion from the Chesler/Bloom study is this: Pakistani immigrants to the West sometimes bring the seeds of a deadly honour culture with them, while Indian immigrants typically do not.

That is because the belief that a family’s honour lives and dies with the perceived chastity and obedience of its female members is deeply culturally ingrained in Pakistan, and often survives for decades, even on Western soil. On the other hand, Indians who emigrate to the West also leave behind the khap panchayats, and the codes of caste behaviour they enforce. (To my knowledge, certainly, there are no khap panchayat in Brampton or Mississauga -- at least, none that issue murder decrees.)

Love Jihad resurfaces

Love Jihad has once again hits the headlines and this time it’s in Kerala. The Christian community in Kerala has reportedly expressed its concern about love jihad and according to the Global Council of Indian Christians, it has “victimized” 2,868 women so far.

The latest case of love jihad involves a Christian woman from Kochi, who left her husband and married the driver of a school bus. Later, she was arrested for allegedly supplying SIM cards to Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Thadiyantavide Nazir, who is currently in prison.

Dr Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, said that Deepa Cheriyan converted to Islam and changed her name to Shahina. Deepa, whose husband works in the Middle East, had an affair with Naushad, who was working as a driver.

Dr George believes that Deepa, like many others, is a victim of love jihad. This issue even piqued US interest. The US diplomats in their report from Chennai consulate said: "Both Hindu and Christian groups have expressed fear and outrage at the 'plot', while Muslim groups have felt the need to defend their co-religionists against the conspiracy theorists".

In a cable sent in February last year mentioned that though the ongoing police investigations in south India had cast doubt on the existence of a "love jihad", the recurring assertion of its existence, despite contrary evidence demonstrates the suspicion and intolerance that exist among some of the region's religious communities.

The report also said: “The Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council had reported that there had been 2,868 female victims of love jihad in Kerala between 2006 and 2009. The panel had made several recommendations to parents through its newsletter, including a recommendation to monitor children's cellphones and computers, so that they can be better prepared to fight the phenomenon and resist charming young Muslim men involved in the scheme.” 

The cable, as disclosed by WikiLeaks, said that Sajan George was convinced that “there was a concerted effort in south India by some Muslim men to get Christian women to fall in love with them in order to convert them”. 

The Kerala high court had also taken note of the matter and had asked the police to investigate the cases of two college-going girls. The two girls were allegedly forced to convert to Islam after they married Muslim men.

Police in Kerala said that in most cases of love jihad, the victims were merely used as pawns in criminal activities. Many of the victims had no idea what they were getting into and often got into lured by the young men.

Added to all this, a controversial poster, warning against Muslim youth marrying and converting Hindu girls, appeared in the premises of the BJP headquarters in New Delhi. What’s surprising is the fact that the poster gave the instances of Bollywood actors Aamir Khan and Said Ali Khan who had married Hindu women, had children and then went for a divorce.  

"Wake up Hindus, wake up. Beware of Love Jihad," the poster warned, appealing to people to report such incidents, and provided an e-mail address and a mobile-phone number. 

Though the poster was later removed from the BJP office, it was allegedly put up by the radical Hindu outfit Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena, but advertised a group called the Anti-Love Jihad Front. Remember which is this Sena? Yes, rightly guessed. It’s the same outfit whose members had allegedly assaulted Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan some months ago and had protested against writer Arundhati Roy for their views on Kashmir!

Ok, let me come back to the term “Love Jihad”. It is also called as “Romeo Jihad”. It is an alleged activity under which some young Muslim boys and men reportedly target college girls belonging to non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by feigning love! While similar activities have been reported elsewhere, the term has been widely used to describe the activity in India.

Reports of similar activities have emerged from Pakistan, where Hindu and Sikh girls were targeted, and the United Kingdom. Targeted sexual offences and forced conversions of Hindu and Sikh girls was not a new phenomenon in the UK, said Ashish Joshio from Media Monitoring group. "This has been going on for decades in the UK. Young Muslim men have been boasting about seducing the Kaffir (unbeliever) women. The Hindu and the Sikh communities must be commended for showing both restraint and maturity under such provocation," he said.

Police in the UK are even working with universities to clamp down on "aggressive conversions" during which girls are beaten up and forced to abandon university courses. The problem was most common in cities such as Birmingham, Leeds and Bradford, while London universities had “at least two or three cases” each. 

Why would Muslim boys target non-Muslim girls? Ramesh Kallidai, from the Hindu Forum of Britain, estimated hundreds of girls had been targeted, with some reports of Muslim boys being offered £5,000 “commissions”.  The National Union of Students said it did not want to discriminate against Muslims but agreed some extremists were causing concern. They have managed to infiltrate Brunel University in West London, Bedfordshire University, Sheffield Hallam University and Manchester Metropolitan University, according to a Muslim charity.

Coming back to India, this activity has raised concerns in various Hindu and Christian organisations. On the other hand, Muslim organisations in Kerala have denied that any such activity is true.  

When some parts of the country were worried about this issue, investigations were conducted in 2009 in Kerala and Karnataka and the reports said that there were no such activities in the country.

In January 2012, Kerala police declared that Love Jihad was "[a] campaign with no substance" and brought legal proceeding against the website hindujagruti.org for "spreading religious hatred and false propaganda". What more to say, the issue successfully garnered the international attention.

Organisations and people alleged that love jihad was conducted in Kerala and Managalore, and Kerala Catholic Bishops Council claimed that up to 4,500 girls in Kerala have been targeted, whereas Hindu Janajagruti Samiti claimed that 30,000 girls have been converted in Karnataka alone. Not just that, even general secretary of Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana said that there had been reports in Narayaneeya communities of love jihad attempts.

This activity, rather say the very term, became popular in September 2009, when the reports of two women from Pathanamthitta in Kerala were forced to convert to Islam after being lured by two Muslim men "feigning love". Initially, the women said their conversion was voluntary. However, subsequently - they were staying with their parents in the interim period on the court's orders - they claimed they were abducted and coerced to convert. The two men were reported to be members of Campus Front, a student outfit of the Popular Front of India, a conglomerate of Muslim organisations that is alleged to be engaged in radicalizing Muslims in south India.

What’s noteworthy is the fact that Christians, who have been in the crosshairs of the Hindu right-wing for their offer of "inducements" to convert Hindus to Christianity, have joined hands with Hindu right-wing organisations against the love jihadis!

When police have declined any such activity in the country, why are parents so scared? There’s a reason for this. Traditionally, marriages have been arranged by parents and this trend is slowly changing. Youngsters are increasingly choosing their own partners. They sometimes choose a partner who is from a different caste or sub-caste or sometimes different religion altogether. When parents don’t agree for such a mix marriage, youngsters don’t even think of convincing them, they defy rules, they defy parents and just elope to marry the person whom they have chosen as partner. Maybe it is this fear of losing control over their children which makes parents to get worried.

Why only non-Muslim parents are worried? There’s yet another reason for this. Muslim parents confine their daughters to homes or put them under a burqa. But non-Muslim parents have no other go but to keep themselves busy policing their daughters or thinking up of new ways and means to control them. Whatever it is, the issue is not going to die that sooner.   

Love marriage? Then don't think of living in Asara

When times are changing and youngsters are choosing their own life partners, thanks to the influence of Bollywood romance and romantic songs and lived happily ever after concept, here’s a village which has literally said no to love marriages. To be more open, it has put a ban on love marriages! Weird, but yes, it’s true. When I came across this headline for a moment I giggled, but the very next moment I started thinking about the fate of the poor youth in that village, a village in the heart of rural India which is away from the skyscrapers of Metros.

Council leaders in Asara in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh, have openly said that they would not allow love marriages and those who did so, would not be allowed to live in the village.

Not to forget the fact that this tiny village is not far from the capital, it’s just 40 km (25 miles) from New Delhi!

In a slew of draconian measures, the local government officials have also imposed several restrictions on women, including prohibiting those under 40 from using mobile phones outside and going shopping alone. Not just women, even men are restricted from from using headphones/ earphones on roads and in bylanes.
What's more ridiculous is the councilors have also ordered women to cover their heads when they go outside. Why such an order? They claim they are meant to check harassment! What on earth made them think that slapping restrictions on women can control crime rate? Will these restrictions really safeguard women in the village?

Another point to be noted is 70 per cent villagers are Muslims while 30 per cent are Hindus, most of them Jats. And while the media has dubbed this decision as ‘Taliban Panchayat’, most villagers have welcomed the orders.

The village panchayat’s order not to take or give dowry which is a punishable offence is a welcoming rule.
India is striving to modernize and is yet to come out of the shackles of conservative social traditions in many areas where women’s rights are non-existent. And as such, maybe there’s some reason when villagers consider love marriages as a shame. They think such marriages can damage the family prestige and bring shame to the society. The villagers might be thinking that their new rules would safeguard their women from bad elements in society. Yes, it’s true that it can be very painful for the parents, especially for a girl’s family, when love marriages dent their respectability, but what these villagers are forgetting is the very fact that she too has feelings and choice, after all it is she who has to live her life with the man.

What one has to keep in mind is though Panchayats don’t enjoy any constitutional powers and
their rulings don’t carry any legal weight, they are highly influential. How can anyone forget when they sanction “honour killings” of women whose actions are deemed to have brought shame on their family?

In June 2012, marble miner Oghad Singh in Rajasthan, paraded his 20-year-old daughter’s severed head through his village. He beheaded Manju Kunwar, as he was upset with her way of life and “indecent behaviour” and surrendered to authorities. Why did he do so? The 20-year-old had been living with her parents in the Rajasthani village of Dungarji, 250 miles from Jaipur, after leaving her husband two years ago and recently began seeing several men which "disgusted" her father. When Manju eloped with one man two weeks ago, her father forced her to return and killed her.

Oghad Singh

Interestingly, India last month topped the Thomas Reuters Foundation poll as the worst place for a woman to live, out of the top 19 economies in the world and this village ruling has come at a time when police in Mumbai have launched a crackdown on the city’s morals. In recent weeks, Mumbai police have raided a series of bars and clubs, shutting them down or fining them for being overcrowded. Dozens of women have been arrested in the raids, accused of being prostitutes, leading to protest marches across the city.

Falling in love is easy, making it work is not

It’s not that easy to make marriages last these days. Break-ups and divorces have become very common and one should know what it takes to make a marriage last.

People often take relationships for granted and often think that marriages will sail through without much effort.
We have to put as much work into our relationships as we do into anything else. We put so much into our careers but there’s also a lot of work that goes into making a successful partnership and marriage.

It’s not easy and anybody who’s successful at it deserves a pat on the back. People have got to grow with each other. They have to bend over backwards for each other to make a marriage last.

To fall in love is always easy, but to make a marriage work is difficult. The charm of a marriage starts to fade when people start feeling everything monotonus and boring. They start taking their spouses for granted.

One of my friends had working time difference and she hardly met her husband every day. Their love marriage suddenly seemed to be a failure. But they were quick enough to recover from the jolt before things could go out of control. Surprise visits and of course, the magical words “I love you” did great wonders in their life, as she keeps telling us.

Their schedules were hectic and taking a break from work and going on some holidays really did wonders. When everybody was thinking that their marriage ended and they are about to part their ways, some small changes did miracles. Today, they both are happy and they are in a position to advice friends and colleagues for a happy and long-lasting marriage.

And today, we are happy to see them together. His surprise calls make her blush and his bouquets on Valentine’s Day or on her birthday brings immense joy on her face.

As a friend, I knew how both of them used to argue over trivial issues. Their discussions used to turn into heated debate. Neither of them was ready to apologise, for they felt that it might hurt their ego.

But soon, they realised that it took them nowhere but to the destruction of their beautiful marriage. They had married after convincing their parents for two years. They had to save their love at any cost and they had to sacrifice little each and they did it!

Today, they make certain compromises and sacrifices for each other and are happy. They spend time and give each other the required space. They have realised that work is important and so is spending time with each other. They do not take office work to home. Both respect each other and each other’s feelings.

My first Valentine

True, they say first love cannot be forgotten and I haven't forgotten my first love either.  I still remember my first Valentine's Day. A person whom I admired a lot as a friend, with whom I shared my feelings, had confessed his love to me for the first time. I was taken aback for a while, took a few minutes to recover and my joy knew no limits after he asserted his love.

All started one day when I got a message and I asked who it was, the reply came: "Guess who?" I tried the number and the person on the other end disconnected my call and messaged me not to call, but to guess who it was. Curiosity kills the cat and I called the number from landline, and there he was. Sweet, polite, calm and deep, like an ocean, whose depth I could never fathom till the end.

Don't know how my feelings were towards him when I heard his voice after a gap of nearly two years. I felt like getting back a friend after so many years, though I didn't know much about him or about his feelings. He had come like a wind and gone like a wind (thanks to my friend, his elder sister, a journalist! She had told me the lie that he's the elder sibling). I knew about him only through his sister and in between, the link went missing after he left for Australia, which I came to know again from his sister.

Now, all of a sudden, he comes back, finds my number and calls me. How strange!

We regularly called, messaged each other and kept in contact. We met once or twice in between. Never did it strike me that he was getting pulled towards me. Not even when he asked me to tell the colour of tiles I like (he was constructing a house). I pulled his legs telling that it is better to ask his mother or his would-be wife, as they will be the ones who will stay in the house. "My mom stays in the native, so I'm asking you." How dumb I was, I failed to understand the intention behind his query (Today, I wish I could buy that house if he has any plans of selling, as I have had my feelings attached to it).

During all these conversations, he never openly made it clear that he was interested in me. Our meetings, conversations and messages went on before the D-day came in front of me. On February 13, he called and requested me to meet him in the parking lot of my coaching class.

"Why?" I asked.

"You just come, you will know for yourself," he said.

I went first and waited for him (all these days, he used to wait for me!). He came. He looked bit nervous, though the ever-ready smile was on his lips. He didn't speak much, but said: "Wait for half-an-hour here. You will know why I called you." He vroomed on his bike and I was left alone in the parking lot.

I went to the class and waited, while others in the hostel wondered why I had gone to the class despite having a holiday. I waited for half-an-hour and called him. He was nervous: "Are you still there?"

"Yeah, but tell me the reason. How long should I wait here?"

"Another 10 minutes, you will know. Please, can you wait?"

A moment of silence from him.

"Ok, not more than that."

I wondered why he's making me to wait there. Didn't want to hurt him, so waited for another half-an-hour, totally an hour! Never before did I wait like that for any of my friends.

After an hour, I called him: "I can't wait like this, I'm going."

"Ok," he said in a low voice.

He didn't tell why he had asked me to wait there.

The next day, I went to the class and everybody greeted me with a mischievous smile. Before I could know the reason, a big bouquet of red roses kept on the table in the office room drew my attention.

The staff informed me that somebody had sent me the bouquet. "Who's the lucky guy?" one of my classmates asked.

I was dumb for a while, I couldn't answer his question. I just took the bouquet and left the place.

I called him to know what does he meant by his act.

"What's this?"

"Did you get it? This is why I asked you to wait yesterday."

"But..."

"Did you like it?"

"Like what? Bouquet?"

"Yes, I chose it personally for you and wanted to give you a surprise."

"What does this mean?"

"It means I love you."

I was not just surprised by his answer, rather shocked.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

My literature background came for my help.

"Is it like for this year you like me and next year you will fall in love with someone else?"

"Not like that."

"Then..." I asked in a high tone: "What do you know about me? I have seen guys falling in love and leaving girls in the lurch later..."

"No, I'm not like that," he pleaded.

"So far, how many roses have you got?"

"None."

"How many roses did you give?"

"I didn't count the roses in that bouquet, you can count them if you want."

I laughed at his sense of humour.

He became serious and whispered: "I love you, I want to marry you."

"I want time to think about it."

"Take your own time, but don't hurt me."

I was confused. I liked him as a friend, but never did I think what if he becomes my life partner!

Unlike western countries, India is still conservative when it comes to weddings and proposals. Religion and caste play a major role besides economic status. Though we belonged to the same religion, he was from a caste lower to that of mine. Economic status didn't bother much, as he was a techie (IT industry was in its boom and everyone wanted a techie to be his/her life partner).

After a few months, proposals started coming and my parents were eager to fix one. It was then I realized that without my knowledge I had fallen in love, I had given my heart to him without telling him.

"This is a nice proposal, you will be happy if you marry this guy," my mom said refereeing to a guy. Suddenly, tears popped up and I had no other go, but to tell her about my love. My parents consented with a condition that before taking any steps, they would like to meet the guy and his parents.

I called him to tell about it and I couldn't speak much. I cried more than speaking, putting him in trouble.

"What happened?"

"My parents are looking out for a proposal."

"So?"

"I told them about you."

"Did you accept my proposal? I knew you would."

He was more than happy.

Everything was fine. I waited for his “elder sister” to get married.

He had accepted me as his wife. We discussed a lot about our future. We had a lot of dreams and plans before a stormy day came in front of us.

He had to choose between his mother and me. His mother threatened to kill herself if he marries me against her wish.

He had gone to his native to seek his grandfather's help for our wedding. He came back, but as a completely different person. His calls started decreasing, no replies for my messages. I felt he's avoiding me. I wanted to meet him to know what's happening. After avoiding me for about a week, he told in a low but a firm voice: "Let your parents search another guy for you."

Hell broke down upon me. He made me to wait for over a year to make me see this day, to leave me in the lurch, to shatter my dreams. He made me feel that I had built a castle in the air. He became philosophical, told me that we wouldn't be happy if we marry against his mother's wish and he couldn't see her crying everyday because of our relationship. I cried, I begged him to change his decision, but in vain.

He came like a wind and went like a storm, destroying my peace of mind, love, faith, dreams, plans and everything. He breached my trust, trust on him, the very trust on love.

Today, we both are (happily?!) married to different persons (My hubby knows about my first affair and I doubt if his wife knows about me). Though I had invited him for my wedding, he didn't dare to come.

He didn't invite me for his wedding and my hubby laughs at me for expecting an invitation from him.

He passes through my mind very often, especially on every Valentine's Day, after all, he was my first valentine, the first guy who had told me "I love you"!