Love, longing and need often makes an individual go to heights one may find unimaginable. The phrase, all is fair in love and war in today’s society often gets translated into a series of crime, or violent acts of portrayal. One such witnesses of the passion that makes one go the extent of splatter red all over their life’s journey, has been found in my community space here in Bhilwara.
A Day At The Chai Stall
Our work often takes us to the heart of migrant life: the chai stalls outside factories in Bhilwara. These humble stalls are more than tea stops—they are sanctuaries for workers. Spaces where they exhale their weariness with a sip of chai and a drag of a cigarette. Amidst the hum of conversation and laughter, stories unfold, offering us glimpses into their lives.
But one day was somewhat different. As we sat at the familiar stall, me and my co-worker noticed an unusual stillness. Workers, instead of gathering at the chai spot, hurried past us toward a small crowd near a police vehicle. Curious, we inquired, only to hear the unsettling words:
“Kisi Bihari labour ne UP labour ko chaku maar diya” (Someone from Bihar stabbed a worker from UP)
Shocked but unsure of how this tragedy related to us, we chose to leave and focus on our tasks.
Someone We Knew
The murder that had gripped the factory community soon became headline news. The story unraveled: the victim had been lured by his attacker, made to drink heavily, and stabbed multiple times. The body was then taken to the riverside and drowned. The motive? The accused was madly in love with the victim’s wife. To attain his love, he removed the husband from the picture, a showcase of the height one goes for confessing and proving their love.
When the police released the photos of the culprits, disbelief washed over me and my colleague. Among them was *Hari. Hari was the worker from Bihar, the accused who had committed an unspeakable crime. We had interacted with him in the past and seen him in other light. When you engage with people on their livelihoods and everyday challenges of a migrant life, the streak of violence underneath is not one of the active things one thinks of.
Hari, driven by intense emotions, committed a shocking act of violence by stabbing the woman’s husband—a man he considered to be an hindrance in his passionate love portrayal. In his misguided attempt to escape the confines of an ‘idle relationship’ and win the affection of the woman he loved, Hari took upon the knife and committed the crime of passion.
Such acts often steeped in layers of emotional complexity, blends together the internal turmoil with external pressures. They force us to confront the delicate and often destructive interplay between love, longing, and desperation. In this case, the fallout was devastating: a wife lost her husband, her life uprooted and her stability shattered, while Hari’s actions painted the very concept of love with the bitterness of bloodshed.
#MardKaKhoon
The idea of a man killing another man to attain his love towards a women seems all extreme measures for love, and in fact romanised in fictions. However, the reality paints a whole different picture. That man who was killed, was the woman’s husband. When falling in love, Hari was blinded by his love for her, love that ultimately destroyed the woman. The patriarchal society has this similar lens, giving the men that assertive role to take the extreme measures to attain the woman, as if she is some sort of an object, to fight over. The level of ‘acquiring’ a women and/or her presence remains something that describes the intensity level of a mans wanting.
‘Mardo Ka Khoon’ when rages with emotions of making something their own, they make it their entire agenda to rule it over. This systemic violence that rises with a patriarchal society, to define a gender’s performative role, branches out to reach even larger spaces of socio-political realms. Gender, religion, caste among others, amount to a larger basis of a violence, that start out at a level amongst a smaller group.
The Pyramid Of Hate
The pyramid of hate here portrays the same idea. This in a manner that narrows the acts of hate and bias to a larger extremist acts of violence.
The current society where we live, systemic violence is being subjected by extremists who view their attainment of a region, or a class, or religion as their right. This at the cost of loss of millions of innocents, who did not ask for such snatching of their basic livelihood. My understanding of such a portrayal of a murder acted out of ‘passion’ although seen at a low level of a larger violence, often comes from the idea of attaining their love. And this at the cost of loss of the other.
*Name changed to protect identity
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