Why didn’t she just say no? That is the question everybody is asking about Sia Goyal of the Lohagad Fort fame. Like, how bad is the communication gap between generations in this upper middle class Marwari family that led a 20-year-old girl—ironically named after the ideal wife Sita—to choose murdering an unwanted fiancé over having a difficult conversation with her parents?
And, if she did have that conversation, and it went badly—whether with her parents or her fiancé—how does she become so detached from consequence, how is she rendered so absolutely amoral (that, too, in such a supposedly God-fearing set-up) that she has no qualms whatsoever to take a human life? And, then posting heart-broken messages, fake-mourning him on Instagram? What are her values, where is her conscience, why is there no dharm sankat (spiritual or ethical conflict)? Is she so boxed-in and asphyxiated by her ‘loved ones’ that she feels her choice is justified?
The case is still unfolding and mental health experts will eventually weigh in at some point and tell us if Sia is psychologically troubled or a sociopathic monster. But working with what we currently know, what we are looking at is a tragedy that lays bare the pressures, the greed, the hypocrisies and the desperation that flourishes unchecked behind the glittering facade at the rotten core of the Great Hindu Wedding. This good-girl-gone-rogue has already begun to stir uncomfortable questions.
There’s plenty to unpack here.
1) Sia thinks all she has got to offer is youth and good looks. Nothing else. She believes this so implicitly that it doesn’t even occur to her to keep the Rs1 crore she embezzled from the wedding budget to start a business herself, immediately transferring it to her lover Chetan. Sia, think how much power you are putting in this man’s hands—he can blackmail you forever; you will lose all agency on your life!
2) Her parents, too, seem to view her as an object. When her youth and appearance attract the attention of Ketan’s family, there is no question of saying no to the scion of the Rs600 crore empire. They may have other differences, but all the Goyals seem aligned on the fact that this rishtaa (relationship) is too rich a doodhpak (creamy traditional Gujarati sweet) to pass up and must be locked, asap.
3) Why are children being married off so early? Ketan was only 25—why wasn’t he dating? Why didn’t his parents let him grow up a little, figure out who he was, gain confidence, maybe lose his stammer and make peace with his receding hairline, and then look for a life partner, maybe find one himself? Why this intense pressure on him to play the starring role in a Sooraj Barjatya film, stat?
4) In the age of social media, have we become so comfortable with projecting something else while being something else that we are fully at ease with hypocrisy at such an epic level?
5) Do we create our social structures, or do they create us? In what toxic universe does a young woman reason that murdering a fiancé makes sense because then you will be a tragic heroine too distraught to accept rishtaas for another three years, thus buying time for your boyfriend to ‘make something for himself’?
How marvellously convenient it would have been if the lover in this case had been named Chengez instead of Chetan. Unfortunately, he is not. And now we all have to introspect.
editor@theweek.in
