Romance and the indian conscience

I've always wanted to think that deep inside that us Indians.. irrespective of region and religion are hard core romantics. I come to this conclusion through our movie industry. not d glam sham bollywood but all the other non Hindi industries that complete the jigsaw known as the Indian film industry. Y is it then that an industry more than a century old still continues love, romance and lovers as its central theme in almost all it's movies. Somehow or somewhere a romantic angle has to be had, n a romantic duet between the protagonists is essential. Be it any language, love, romance, intimacy, male-female bonding of a nuptial tendency is celebrated in an unashamed manner. India's moved by leaps and bounds. V r an economic powerhouse, in all likelihood v along with our Chinese neighbours are going to power the world economy, it's nearly four generations since v won our independence but still the concept of love overpowering all doesn't seem to go away from the psyche of successive Indian cinema goers. Now v Indians love the movies, so its safe to assume that if romantic themes work, it goes down well with a majority of us.
The list of classical romance movies is endless, and i'm sure in this genre v can give any international industry a run for their money. But what i find astounding is the fact that for a society that loves the concept of a man and woman falling madly in love on screen forgetting their race, religion,status in reality v r quite the contrary. I don't need to remind any of my readers the number of affairs ending in mutual seperation in this country because of not satisfying the complex religious, economic and caste equations our society has come up with. Ours is a complex soceity , with so many rules, protocols and etiqutte made up because of the uncountable religions, castes , sub castes, languages, regions it has. In such a situation it becomes really hard for a young man charged with loads of testosterone looking for a female partner on his terms . Our poor fellow is aware that if any of his romantic adventures are to succeed he must find a girl falling under the same reliegion, language, sub caste, economic status and in most cases have a father willing to pay suitable dowry or as its fashionably called in my part of the nation varadakshina. I find this concept of dowry quite nauseating , but we'll save that topic for another day.

In fact the experience I've gained from my 20 years of life , it is that in India it's impossible for a red blooded young man to fall in love with a damsel and marry her without pissing off at least one close blood relative. If the couple are lucky, the maximum wrath they will have to face is that relatives sever ties, in more unfortunate cases either the boys or girls side will give chase , n in most unfortunate situations the blood of the young lad might be spilled. It's actually quite common news in India to hear of young men or women being murdered through honour killings. The term is quite an oxymoron as i find no honour in killing people as the only crime they have done is falling in love.

I feel this a manifestation of our deep rooted religious, caste , regional and other truly Indian factors on which discrimination can be made. I'm a muslim an hail from a relatively orthodox family, lemme tell u how it works in my world. For a muslim family the thought of their off spring going off an mating with an infidel is unthinkable. Its a crime justifiable with murder in most cases. Forget marrying infidels, there were i think 2 love marraiges in my family , my maternal and paternal uncles pulled of this act with much bravado. They married muslim girls, belonging to the same sub caste of being urdu speaking muslims . Still they face much wrath!!!! y, because they dared love a girl and marry without parental consent. A foriegner reading this would be forgiven to think India hadn't moved out of the medieval age. So u c as far as young muslim men are concerned , v ain't goin anywer in terms of romance. Its same with every1 else, worse in fact for others. My heart goes out to my hindu brethren, the number of caste, sub castes and other god knos what they have, the probability of them finding a girl on their own is like 1 in a 100.

So there you have it , the tragic story of today's young men, i suspect our preceding generations went through the same ordeal and must have suffered from quite a heartburn. Somehow i think , the romantic muvies v Indians love, it's like a fantasy for us. The life v never have. Young men dream of it, old men well, i dunno what they i think, but i think it might well be a wish that during their days they had the courage to stand up and b with that girl they likd hu was from the "other" side.

I conclude this post with the fervent hope ,that at least by the tym our next generation arrives, v truly would have integrated as a nation and wont hinder the gen next with man made ideals of religion, caste n other assorted nonsense, maybe then the movies during their tym will focus on science fiction. In our times i guess romance qualifies as fiction as it almost always is the forbidden fruit v neva can have.

- Akram