Dhanya Matsa/Newindpress
Peraiyur, Feb 20: Love was definitely in the air for the villagers of the Dalit colony in Udhalampatti, near Peraiyur, in Madurai District on Valentine's Day last week.
A girl turned up at her lover's house on Valentine's Day eve and insisted that he marry her. After a night long katta panchayat by the village elders and enquiry at the local police station, they finally tied the nuptial knot.
The boy’s family’s opposition to this marriage was “unusual” as live-in relationships and love marriages are a frequent affair in this village. When women come to the men's house and insist on staying put there, nobody raises an eyebrow.
What's more, the couple doesn’t even have to move to a new house but live with their parents. Against these marital conventions, the marriage request that came on Valentine’s day quite caught the village elders by surprise.
When the reporter visited the village, the freedom with which the women moved from one house to another was baffling. Most young girls narrated how men approached them while at work as manual labourers or even as early as in schools and then move on for a live-in relationship once either of them starts earning a livelihood.
Unfortunately, even this ‘ideal’ situation can be bane for the woman. Saradha (name changed) had a huge smile on her face when she recounted her love story to this reporter.
But prod her a little more and out comes a sob story: “My first two relationships did not really work. Only when you start living with them do you realise that the men will eventually cheat you. So we parted on mutual consent. My third relationship was serious and we had plans to get married. I took loans from Women Self Help Groups and spent my earnings for his education. But after he completed his education, he said he had met someone else and wanted to marry her.”
But life has moved on for Saradha. She fell in love with another man and is now living happily with him. The villagers do have some rules though.
Panju, a 60-year-old woman said that on no account were the young ones allowed to marry or have a live-in relationship with people from other villages. Parents were only lenient when girls or boys go looking for a life partner, she said.
However, Panju said that the institution of marriage was slowing being accepted by the youngsters and now more of them want to get married.