Good Lord. This is news to me. Of course, it is not just husbands killing wives, but the other way too, as a much-publicized recent case shows. And another one where the well-qualified wife was marrying only to divorce and get heavy alimony. But I always feel that the media highlights these stories out of proportion and by doing so, primes and poisons our minds to look at things in a skewed way as if it were the norm. The fact is that even today, there are plenty of husbands and wives who sacrifice so much and sometimes too much for one or the other that goes unnoticed because it doesn’t excite us. We find goodness quite natural and normal, which is an interesting thing to study.
Killing with evil intent is indeed the darkest, cruelest act one can imagine. But then has it not always been there? Bride-killing, so-called honour-killing, female infanticide, rapes and murders are the extreme spill overs of the collective social consciousness that sees women as a pleasure object alone. This message is broadcast through cinema, through advertisement, through the priests of all religions, through the common party jokes, through horror stories released on big platforms, placing the pursuit of pleasure as the first and last goal and in so many ways. Its extreme result are these killings. They are a symptom of a larger, more widespread disease whose names are ego and desire.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
