What Light From Yonder Window Breaks?
I remembering hearing about how TV viewers in Hyderabad had their regular broadcasts interrupted by the newsflash about the young couple who eloped. 19-year-old Sreeja Konidela and 23-year-old Shirish Bharadwaj were neither the first (nor the last) couple to take the dramatic step of running away in the name of love.
Sreeja’s father is a very famous South Indian film star named Chiranjeevi, who had forbidden his daughter to date Shirish, who was from a lower caste and economic background.
I’ve been reading about Sreeja and Shirish’s story in an article from the Global Post. The flame of young love burned bright and Shirish and Sreeja kept it alive by exchanging notes once a month that were passed through a friend. (How’s that for an enduring romance?) Sreeja’s father then insisted she leave college and she started receiving marriage proposals, which she communicated to Shirish through her notes. Deciding there was no time like the present, her Romeo followed suit, and proposed.
The Path of True Love Doesn’t Always Run Smoothly…
India legalized inter-caste and intercommunity marriages in 1872 – but ironically, the law designed to facilitate these civil unions – a.k.a. the Special Marriage Act has become a double-edged sword and is now used to prevent non-arranged marriages. An amendment passed in 1954 made it so that the couple must announce their wedding and provide their parents’ names and addresses, then wait 30 days while the parents confirm with the families that neither party is already married.
Sadly, the delay has led to some parents locating runaway lovebirds and reclaiming them by filing a claim that their offspring was kidnapped or abducted. Then the police track them down, and often throw the groom in jail and return the bride to her parents. It’s hardly a white-picket fence. In some scenarios the young lovers’ fate is far worse…
The Law on Love
Thanks to a 1954 amendment, the couple must announce their impending nuptials, provide the names and addresses of their parents, and wait 30 days while the police verify with their families that neither person is already married. The delay helps parents locate runaway couples and retrieve them by filing false kidnapping and abduction cases (which have grown 30 percent faster than other crimes against women since 2002).
“If a lower-caste man is involved with a higher-caste woman, he is invariably killed. And the girl, whether belonging to the higher caste or the lower, is also almost certainly eliminated,” says Prem Chowdhry, author of Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste and Patriarchy in Northern India – in the Global Post article.
A Giant Leap of Love and Faith
Thankfully, Sreeja and Shirish’s story had a happier ending. The couple made plans to runaway together through their notes and Sreeja told her parents she was visiting her aunt but instead he met Shirish and went directly to the temple to marry him. The couple actually used Chirankeevi’s fame to their advantage and invited the news media to their wedding, broadcasting it live to make the marriage indisputable. Then they put pedal to metal and drove, and drove, all the way to Delhi and safety.
The broadcasts of the wedding and of the elopement also worked in their favour and even the Delhi High Court showed support for them. Eventually, the young couple were able to return to their lives in Hyderabad, where today they live with Shirish’s family.
As a die-hard romantic I find their story and the stories of other young lovebirds on the run incredibly inspiring – although I find it really sad that there have to exist such divisions in families. It takes a strong love and will like that of Sreeja and Shirish to take such a step, but also a strong love from Chirankeevi to surpass his traditional values and conditioning and eventually accept his daughter’s wishes.
Have you ever eloped in the name of love? Tell us your story!
“For stony limits cannot hold love out.
And what love can do that dares love attempt.” – Romeo and Juliet, 2. 2
