Lucknow, May 18 (PTI) The Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh may be rustic in many ways, but not when it comes to throwing a marriage under the bus, or so suggests a pattern that has come up over the months.
Extramarital affairs ending in husbands' killing, wilful divorce for the sake of lovers' uniting, and instances of most unlikely eloping have struck the region.
Experts opine that the trend only reveals the "evolving" nature of relationships.
The state's Sant Kabir Nagar and Farrukhabad districts, about seven hours' drive apart, were united by an oddity.
In Sant Kabir Nagar, Bablu, when he discovered that his wife had an extra-marital affair, decided to marry her off to the man she loved.
"I preferred peace over confrontation," Bablu told PTI immediately after.
"Of late, we have seen that wives have murdered their husbands (on such issues). So I decided to get my wife married to her lover so that we could both live peacefully," he said, referring to the headline-grabbing Meerut 'blue drum' murder earlier in the year.
The generous send-off, however, did not last long, and Bablu approached the man merely days after to get his wife back, as he was finding it difficult to raise their two children all by himself. It was all a "misunderstanding," he then said about the whole deal.
In Farrukhabad, Rahul separated from his wife, Vaishnavi, so that he could help her remarry. The two are yet to divorce, but are firm on starting afresh.
A more riveting drama unfolded in Aligarh, where a daughter was given the shock of her life when her mother eloped with the man she was going to marry 10 days later.
Madrik village native Ramakant gave a piece of his mind on the incident: "It's common for mothers to turn emotional ahead of their daughter's wedding, but to see that someone could elope with the man with whom her daughter was to get married is unheard of."
The woman's daughter said there were signs of something brewing with her mother, but it seemed too unlikely to happen.
"I was to get married on April 16, and my mother eloped with him days before. She took away the cash and jewellery kept for my wedding. For the last few months, she had been chatting on the phone with the groom, but none of us expected her to elope," she told the media.
Dr Supriya Das, a counselling psychologist specialising in family dynamics, said all these incidents were superficially sensational and only betrayed the human complexity
"These incidents, while seemingly sensational, highlight a fascinating and complex interplay between evolving individual desires and deeply entrenched societal norms," she said
She also refused to dismiss the incidents as "isolated anomalies" and claimed were a manifestation of "underlying shifts" in how people have been increasingly perceiving and navigating relationships.
A most striking murder that took place in Meerut in March has since spawned a rash of Bhojpuri songs featuring a 'blue drum' – the vessel which was used to dump the chopped parts of the husband.
Muskan Rastogi, with her lover Sahil, allegedly killed her husband, Saurabh Rajput, a former Merchant Navy officer who had flown in from London to celebrate her birthday.
According to police, Rajput was drugged, stabbed, dismembered, and thrown into a drum, which was later filled with cement.
Also in Meerut, Ravita, 27, and her lover Amardeep, 19, allegedly strangled Ravita's husband, Amit Kashyap. The pair planted a venomous snake near his body to stage a natural death. A post-mortem report, however, revealed them as the likely murderers.
Shivani of Bijnor, who claimed her husband had suffered a heart attack, was exposed when an autopsy revealed he had been strangled.
In Auraiya, a marriage lasted just 15 days before the woman, her lover, and a contract killer murdered the husband, Dilip Yadav.
Yet not all stories end in violence: some were marked by startling boldness.
In Budaun, Mamta, 43, a mother of four, eloped with her daughter's father-in-law, Shailendra, after a yearlong affair. Her husband, a truck driver often away from home, claimed she took valuables from the house when she left.
In Siddharthnagar, two already-married villagers – Geeta and Gopal — ran away and tied the knot, leaving behind their spouses and nine children.
Their hush-hush marriage was discovered only when their wedding pictures surfaced on Facebook.
In Amroha, a 30-year-old woman, previously known as Shabnam, and twice married, converted to Hinduism and took marital vows with an 18-year-old school boy in a temple.
She has three children from her previous two marriages.
"The 'mundane realities' of marriage have always existed, but perhaps there's a growing intolerance for a lack of emotional fulfilment. People might be feeling empowered, or perhaps desperate, to seek alternatives that prioritise personal happiness, even if it means challenging long-standing social conventions," Das said.