#marriage in india

[mplanetleaf]

Weird Marriages in Hinduism | సనాతనధర్మంలో ‘వింత పెళ్ళిళ్ళు’

[atavist]

Two women promised they would see the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time once they were together. They had no idea how long that would take—bureaucracy, bigotry, and the pandemic stood in their way.

“Love, Interrupted,” Atavist issue no. 154, is now live:

Now 1,100 miles apart, the two women texted and called each other incessantly. Shree wanted more. She knew that Ashwini was on the cusp of an arranged marriage, which had already cost Shree one relationship. “I like you,” she told Ashwini after a few weeks. “But if it’s a no, that’s fine. We should stop talking right now.”

Ashwini wasn’t sure what to do. She knew the risks she faced: Walking away from an arranged marriage would almost certainly require coming out to her parents, and once her orientation was no longer a secret, who knew what kind of condemnation or rejection she might face—personal, professional, or otherwise? Plus, she would have to learn to accept herself for who she was. The alternative, however, was a life without Shree.

A few days after Ashwini’s 30th birthday, she video-called Shree. Looking at Shree’s face, she knew that she was ready to make the leap. Ashwini asked Shree to be her girlfriend.

[longreads]

She wanted to go to the mountains of India, but not in order to mimic the trope she’d seen in movies: Woman retreats into nature and discovers herself. Rather, the trip would be one last chance to escape the weight of having to hide her identity.

How long would you wait for love? For two queer women—one from India, the other from Nepal—the answer was: as long as it takes.

Visit Longreads to read “Love Wins,” an excerpt from the new issue of The Atavist Magazine.

[enigma-the-mysterious]

Diversity wins! The Supreme Court of India, that refuses to legalize same sex marriage, has granted equal marriage rights to heterosexual transgender marriages. They are being homophobic but in a trans friendly way

[unbfacts]

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - December 1-7

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles for 50% off this month!

1. These high-tech windows fight climate change – and will save you money

“[“Vacuum-insulated glass”] insulates five times better than double-paned glass. The Enthermal product line holds energy about as well as fiberglass wall insulation[…. T]he energy bill savings offset the upfront cost of the upgrade in two to seven years, depending on the building[….]”

2. Doulas test ways to curb Memphis’ Black maternal, infant deaths

“Research shows they are key to better health outcomes. […] Free of charge, [parents enrolled in this pilot program], in addition to being paired with a doula, get access to free yoga classes, diapers, breastfeeding starter kits, nutritious food and other tangible help that can measurably boost well-being.”

3. Scientists find feeding grazing cattle seaweed cuts methane emissions by almost 40%

“This is the first study to test seaweed on grazing beef cattle in the world. […] Most research to reduce methane emissions using feed additives has taken place in controlled environments with daily supplements. But Kebreab noted in the study that fewer than half of those methods are effective for grazing cattle.”

4. Success for local residents as Florida council toppled over sewage plant plan

“A citizens’ revolt in a small Florida city ousted an entire slate of councilors who were pushing for a new sewage plant to be built close to one of the state’s most pristine and treasured rivers.”

5. Beaver survey aims to show the urban benefits of Chicago's 'ecosystem engineers'

“Urban Rivers is installing [“artificial floating gardens”] along the river to restore native wetland habitats, which provide food and shelter for wildlife, as well as natural spaces for humans.”

6. The future of plastic: Biodegradable, durable, and even edible

“[… T]he composite plastic proved not only sturdy but also more malleable than its core component, hydroxyethyl cellulose. Additionally, since both cellulose and tyrosine are edible, the biodegradable composite plastic can technically be consumed.”

7. Limestone quarries could be vital for wild bee conservation

“Quarries provide valuable habitats for wild bees and other animals and plants that occur on the now rare calcareous grasslands," explains lead author Dr. Felix Kirsch[….]”

8. New England wedding vendors offer help to same-sex couples before Trump inauguration

“Marriage equality isn’t immediately at risk. Trump has said he considers it settled law, but of course it’s hard to take him at his word […] so vendors in the region are offering free or discounted services to queer couples and noncitizens in a rush to marry.”

9. The indigenous women saving India's endangered giant yams

“Since their formation in 2022, the 10 members of the Noorang group have planted and brought back to the community 180 varieties of wild tubers[….] The project is part of [… a] farming initiative to eradicate poverty, provide agricultural training and empower women in vulnerable tribal communities.”

10. The US is making and deploying more solar panels than ever before

“[… D]omestic solar module manufacturing capacity has nearly quintupled since 2022[….] Solar is the cheapest source of new power generation by far, and it’s an increasingly large employer in the U.S., particularly in Republican-led states.”

November 22-28 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[poetic-vidhi]

WE LIVE IN A "INDIA"?

We live in a INDIA where women's are worshiped at days,

But get gang raped at night!

We live in a India where a rapist or criminal can go to temple but a bleeding women can't!

We live in a India where women's are "allowed" to work but still be expected to do all the household!

We live in a India where we proud to be landed on moon but why still be ashamed of menstruation!

We live in a India where a women is "allowed" to study but still be expected to get married by 22!

We live in a India where we say daughter's and son's are equal but why still doctors hide the gender till the birth?

We live in a India where a father gives his life income in dowry but why not on her education?

We live in a India where we talk about all the equality but why no one talks about the unequality of only women leaving her home?

We live in a India where sons are asked for their graduation/ income but why daughter's are asked for what can they cook?

We live in a India where men's can urinate in public but why women still be questioned on a skirt?

We live in a India where a good women goes to heaven but the bad one goes anywhere she wants!

And Yes, sometimes I'm not proud to say I live in India!.

~Vidhi Vikram Singh Gaur

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

i explain india but i'm drunk.

Hello maggots of mine you're all such babygirls and bastards just like Aziraphale and Crowley. I'm so proud of you all for existing. Yes i'm a wholesome drunk you now know this about me. The wine tastes like rotten grapes and smells of battery acid and cost 245 rupees INR. Speaking of INR, thanks to a maggot's ask, I'm here to explain India. I've never set foot outside of this country. But I'm also very very shit at general knowledge.

To any non-Indians reading this, this is a totally legit 1000% everything covered all-inclusive summary. To any Indians reading this, I'm so so fucking sorry.

India, explained.

So there's south india and there's north india and there's north east india. north india is very racist about south india and they're both very racist about north east india. Most of these people are also probably racist either to other countries or they have internalised racism. It's a wild trip.

There are. A lot of languages here. And a LOT of scripts. I can read two scripts, understand four Indian languages and speak in two of them (badly), and those two are not my native tongues. I cannot speak in my native tongues. It's basically English at this point. These aren't dialects, those are separate. Picture like, Europe, but more, in terms of how many languages.

Everyone hates each other which is valid for the entire planet honestly.

In south india we have a lot of coconuts. Like a lot. There are so many coconuts you have no fucking idea guys you cannot escape the coconuts. I was nearly killed by a shower of coconuts when I was 5 I escaped by one second.

There are also cows. People will tell you that you are being racist when you say India has cows everywhere. But it's true. Two weeks ago I had the pleasure to be stuck in a traffic jam. Next to the street barrier thing (what divides a street im too drunk for this) I saw a huge bull fucking HUMPING a cow. The vehicles just had to move around them. They were having sex right there.

If you're a middle class Indian kid, your career options are: doctor, engineer, scientist, CA, lawyer, government official or family disappointment.

Needless to say, I was going to be doctor and am now instead family disappointment. I'm babygirling so hard it's insane. The prodigal son.

It's very ace-friendly and heterophobic in the sense that you are not supposed to be exhibiting any sexuality whatever in a respectable household. Just shut up and give virgin birth already. But be married. That's crucial.

Oh yeah gay marriage isn't legal trans people are constantly othered by society and/or given no respect whatsover and we're just all vibing here this is totally not why I'm finishing a small bottle of cheap wine on a thursday past midnight alone in my room.

Foreigners are like a zoo species you see them you're instantly concerned like what are they doing outside the TV screens and then either people are normal (rarely), they run up and take photos or try to slip into conversation (more often than you'd think, even I've been guilty of the conversation thing as a kid) OR they start talking about how 'this western culture is ruining our culture'. Which is fair but honestly both the 'cultures' these people are talking about usually involve incredible amounts of bigotry and are more similar than they think.

I think the lesson here is that humans just suck as a species. Except for you maggots. I love you all and I will defend you with my life.

THE CHAAT. THE CHAAT IS INSANELY AMAZING. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE CHAAT. I HAVE NO SPICE TOLERANCE SO I HAVE TO BEG ON MY KNEES FOR THE SPICES TO BE REDUCED BUT STILL. THE CHAAT. THE CHAAT, YOU GUYS. YOU NEED IT.

Sorry yes I'm normal. ALSO THE STREET DOGS. THE INDIES. THEY'RE SO LOVELY AND SWEET AND CHAOTIC AND I KEEP TALKING TO THEM. Once when I was crying I made the dog distress while and like five dogs that I didn't know came running to me and comforted me and licked me.

INDIAN DANCE MUSIC. I FUCKING LOVE IT IT'S INSANE. My family were elitist as fuck so I never got to listen to Bollywood music as a kid but it's AMAZING I'm so glad it exists. Bhangra too.

Beaches very very pretty hills very very pretty honestly the nature is fucking beautiful if you can just quickly pretend humans don't exist, which again is true of this entire planet. Yeah. Okay I'm so fucking drunk.

Yeah lots of diversity which is very nice when the humans aren't screaming at each other about it but the rest of the time it's very nice

The garbage and sewer stories? yeah they're all true im sorry

Traffic rules more like traffic suggestions amirite

Well, we still have far better healthcare access than america. so. there is that.

If you speak English well you'll be mocked and isolated. If you speak English poorly you'll be mocked and isolated. Honestly, just be rich. That'll fix it all.

All the conservatives hate each other and don't realise they're the exact same but in like different flavours.

Oh yeah we have auto rickshaws. Look them up. They're so much better than cars I don't get motion sick as easily in them. But the drivers all hate you and never want to take you anywhere.

Eyyyyyyyyyy it's so fucking fun here *drinsk more alcohol* I am so fucking not looking forward to college.

Please someone crowdfund me out of here let's all go chill in Alpha Centauri I've heard it's nice this time of the year.

I will, however, miss the casual live cow pornos. A true highlight.

[I got this peer-reviewed by my friend in India's top law school, just in case, because I'm too drunk and generally dumb. They say I will not be killed. And they've been on Twitter so.]

Irrefutable legal proof y'all. I don't mean to offend anyone except bigots. Fuck you, bigots, if you're not offended then I've disappointed my community.

[janaknandini-singh999]

"same sex marriage denied by sc-"

you don't understand love, do you? you never did. my queer lil inner girl got so happy for a second tho. the one who secretly watched section 377 go down thus decriminalizing her lil existence but was too scared to celebrate it in front of everyone outside who were shaking their heads and spewing hatred against the queers and the historic judgement

[starryalpacasstuff]

Knock Knock Boys: A Queer Asian Lens

I didn't watch Knock Knock Boys as it was airing, because it didn't really seem like the kind of show I'd be into. However, this post by @lurkingshan and @waitmyturtles' enthusiastic recommendation convinced me to give it a shot. Having binged the entirety of the series in a day, I can say that the show was an absolute delight to watch.

I've seen plenty of people talking about how wonderfully sex positive the show was, so I'm not going to bother with going too much into it, but I will say that the drama clearly showed the kind of sex education and awareness that is desperately needed around the world. I also really liked how Lukpeach and Latte were the ones responsible for pretty much all of the sex education in the show. It was very realistic in that, in my experience, it's extremely common for teenagers and young adults to get a majority of their knowledge about sex from their friends and the internet. The show had a very clear message about the importance of talking freely about sex with younger generations, because the taboo on the topic only harms teenagers in the long run.

Now, besides that, there was one more issue that I thought the show did wonderfully: it showed how asian kids are often hesitant to discuss things with their parents because they assume the worst in the beginning. I'm having some trouble articulating this, because it's such an abstract, ingrained concept to me, so forgive me if this is incoherent. I'm also generalizing my experience as an Indian, so please do correct me if I'm wrong here. That being said, having been raised in a society that values respect and listening to elders without question, discussing alternate ideas with parents can be a very difficult thing for most of us. It's easy to assume what parents would say to an idea and decide that trying to convince them otherwise is a task that is either futile or requires too much energy.

The best way I can describe is that the mindset becomes "It's better to ask for forgiveness if you get caught instead of asking for permission straight away". For example, had Almond asked his mother if he could stay with three other guys, she would've most definitely flat out refused, since she would've had a lot of preconceived notions about the idea. But, because Almond is able to show her that he's happy as he was, she was perfectly fine with him continuing to stay with the others. I think that's the hallmark of most asian parents, they want us to be happy but they're convinced that they know what kind of life will make us happy. They did something similar with Peak and his father, but my feelings on that are a little more complex, so we'll come back to this.

Peak and Thanwa, man. I loved Latte and Almond but these two just stole the show for me. I know some people felt frustrated with Peak's dallying and hesitance, but I just felt so sad for him, and something about his situation just hit very close to home. And Seng, the actor that he is. One particular moment that stuck with me was the scene when he leaned against the door while Jumper attacked Max. I must've rewatched that moment half a dozen times, because his acting was impeccable. I will say, I wish that they'd given us a better resolution on the arc after Max, but those are mostly minor quibbles. What I really wanted to talk about was the arc with Peak's father. Peak gathering the courage to tell his father with the support from his found family was beautiful. The scene at Knock Knock House the day before Peak left was one of the most magnificent, emotionally charged scenes I've seen in asian ql in a while. Coming from a societ wherein arranged marriage is the norm, the storyline hit hard in all the right places.

But. I did not love the resolution of the arc. I think we've had some conversation about how some shows try to be both in the bubble and out of the bubble simultaneously, and the last two episodes of the show felt a little like that. From what we knew about the father, it felt almost too easy for him to simply accept everything right away. There should have been some struggle for reconciliation. I know that the show has a theme of assumptions and lack of communication disrupting parent-child relationships, but in this case how fast they move on just seems unrealistic. My cynicism aside, even if we assume that the father wasn't homophobic, there should've been more of a conversation on the breaking of the engagement! The social implications, the father asking him why he didn't say anything for so long, Jane's involvement (how did the father know that she knew about this?). The only argument I can see against this is that the father, while initially put off by the revelation, chose to act otherwise to support his son. But then, he most likely wouldn't have insisted they take his car. And there still should've been some sort of a conversation about the engagement. Arranged marriages have a purpose; it's to provide financial and social security. I find it extremely hard to believe that a father who arranged a marriage for his son wouldn't have so much as discuss the implications of being gay with him. They tried to have the engagement have consequences with the wedding banquet, but the resolution for that really only made it worse. This is cynical of me, but I simply cannot suspend my disbelief enough to believe that the entire wedding party was perfectly happy with the turn of events. This whole resolution just seemed out of place in a show that was otherwise so wonderfully grounded in reality while still being absolutely hilarious. I think, if the show had done something a little more similar to GAP, it would've felt more realistic.

All of that aside, I really did enjoy watching the show. It was hilarious and heartwarming, and the characters were absolutely wonderful. The resolution of the final arc did drag it down a little, but I would be lying if I said that watching two queer couples get to celebrate their relationships with their community didn't warm my heart at all (Also, side note- Jane having a girlfriend was a brilliant subversion). All in all, it's a great series. It definitely felt like something new and fresh compared to the kind of qls that I've been watching lately.

[hyperdemona]

On the ongoing debate on legalising same-sex marriage. Currently this is how things stand - If we can agree biological sex isn't real, we can have same sex marriage, because how do we even KNOW heterosexual marriage is between persons of opposite sex? 🤡🤡Might as well permit gay marriage.

The opposing side (The Union government) - Biological sex is real and same sex marriage goes against core Indian values.

Man this really wasn't how I expected this discussion to go. Ajdhhdksmandndm

HOW HARD is it to agree that homosexuality is a regular, natural phenomenon between people of the same sex, that is distinct from heterosexuality??? HOW HARD is it to argue that denying them the right to marry is groundless?? What is the need of all this obfuscation and mental gymnastics???? How do they expect to be taken seriously? In the end I already know this whole thing is going to end with gay marriage NOT being upheld.

Y'all stupid whites are why we're here btw

[shubhadeep385]

WEDDING💍 LOOKS 👀

Scene : After the wedding(India)

Maybe no one observed it, so I thought of sharing the aftermath of marriage.

[papenathys]

What a lot of young Indians needs to understand is that marriage is just another heteronormative institution that ultimately serves as a tool of the state to control you. Also, if you think legalising gay marriage would a) magically make mainstream society embrace us with open arms into their midst b) benefit any other group aside from the upper and upper middle class Indians, esp. savarna Hindu cis gays, then you're so, so naive and idealistic.

A cis, heterosexual couple was ambushed in public transport in my city for hugging. Just hugging. Interfaith and intercaste marriages create violence and feuds across entire villages or small towns, even cities, pitting families and communities against each other. Inevitably ending in honour killings and bigoted kangaroo court verdicts. Again. These are straight marriages sanctioned by law.

So, what chance do we have? Is a govt. policy benefitting a tiny minority and never ensuring grassroots change something to actually wait upon? Is it not better to follow the work of activists and non govt. communities and help them in uplifting the queer, trans, marginalized voices for healthcare, job safety, funds, therapy resources etc?

[curtwilde]

A family court in Indore, Madhya Pradesh has directed a woman to return to her husband's home with immediate effect and principal judge NP Singh observed that wearing the ritualistic 'sindoor' (vermillion) was the duty of a (Hindu) woman as it demonstrates that she is married, and refusing to wear it is "kind of cruelty".

The hearing included a plea of a man seeking restoration of his "rights" under the Hindu Marriage Act after his wife walked out of the marriage five years ago. The woman who had left and wanted a divorce, accused her husband of physical and mental harassment for dowry.

Source

[yaserk57]

They not her

[enigma-the-mysterious]

Can't believe we waited all these months on tenterhooks, only to get some fucking lip service from these so-called "liberal" judges. Fuck you. We are not asking for your fucking sympathy. We are asking for our basic fucking rights.

India is a conservative country and we all know the social prestige attached to a marriage. Not to mention the legal, economic and social benefits. Gay couples have a right to those as much as heterosexual couples do. Marriage is not a fundamental right, my ass

And they know very well that with the conservative government that's sitting in the Parliament right now, we are never getting a marriage equality act passed. The case is closed now.

Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!