Monday, December 20, 2010

Single Girls Banned From Using Cell Phones

You’re not allowed to have a cell phone if you were a single girl and if you lived in a certain northern Indian village. Imagine being single and not only the man of your dreams is eluding you, but you can’t even send text messages to a prospective groom. Or, if you fancy spending the rest of your life alone, you could never own a hand phone!

I'm sure you're as shocked as I am. Who could live without a cell phone these days?  It has become a necessity, almost like an extension of our fingers, this gadget which hardly anyone owned just 3 decades ago.

Pic from Google Images
So why aren’t single girls allowed to own hand phones in this village in India? It’s to curb intra-clan marriages among the 3 million people of this village. To them, marrying someone from the same clan is equivalent to marrying one’s sibling and is therefore, forbidden.

Apparently, several couples have gotten married without parental approval, after planning their elopement over their cell phones. Those who violate marriage taboos can end up being victims of ‘honour killings’. Some punishments were ordered by the village councils themselves and three girls were beheaded by the male members of their own families recently. It sounds so vengeful.

Wouldn’t you rather choose to stay single and ‘phone-less’ if the other option is married and headless?

This was what Satish Tyagi, a spokeman for the village assembly said in a recent news report: “All parents were told to ensure their unmarried daughters do not use cell phones. The boys can do so, but only under their parents’ monitoring.” 

Oh well, they didn’t mention anything about emails, Facebook, online chats and messages.

2 comments:

  1. Geez...That's cruel and so kolot! In KK primary school kids pun have their own hp. Kasian those girls.

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  2. Yes Lizee, kasian the girls and even the boys kena monitor! At first I thought it was because of the caste system thing... no marriage into other castes. But I read about it and discovered it was only in this northern Indian village... not the whole sub-continent!

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