Closure
Yadu Raj Baral/Michigan, USA
Closures had/have become the talk of every mouth in Nepal. Before one sets off for his/her duty, it has become necessary to request either an astrologer or a palmist to tell him/her whether his/her fortunes have been misfortuned by the closure. It so seems that every educational institute inserted a ‘closure faculty’ in the academics where the ‘closure experts’ trained the ‘closure foretellers’ who will then prepare a ‘closure schedule’ for a year. Here is what I discovered on a day of closure.
On the way to Jaigoan, my wife and I were compelled to seek refuge in a lodge in Kakarvitta due to West Bengal closure. Knowing not its relaxation we thought to relax ourselves blaming our luck for a bad set off. Later, on the same day we heard ‘Nepal closure’ the following day. Being fed up by the closures, I told my wife that it was a ‘closure competition’ and went into the lodge.
It was around midnight; I heard a bitter cry of an infant in the same flat. I relieved myself that at least someone was there without ‘cry closure’. But, when the cry went non-stop, we wanted to know. The room had that crying child and her mother. Unable to calm her, the mother too was crying deepening her hands in her tearful cheeks. The baby kept on wailing until we made her aware of our presence. The other guests who were sharing the same flat of the lodge were throwing at her the words of imprecation. I protested why no one had announced ‘mouth closure’. My wife brought the child and her mother into our room. She soothed the baby to sleep and told her mother to share our room for that night. I worried of ‘life closure’ as I had heard that such a girl would condemn anyone for anything.
Upon inquiry, we found her to be a gentle one but had been tortured inhumanly. Her parents had disunited her from her lover and had got her married to an unknown one against her will. After a year of her marriage, her husband demanded dowry in cash, which she could not pay. The parents-in-law had behaved with her brutally intending her death or elopement with someone else. She had tried to make them understand but in vain. ‘I want to live for this daughter’, replied she in misery. She blamed her own parents that they deprived her from her happiness. ‘Had I been married to my lover, he would have given me a handful of love that I wanted’, she recalled freshly.
Although, there is a legal management in Marriage Law under Civil Law against dowry system, it has been only confined as the workless law book. Thousands of Nepali sisters, who are being maltreated by their husbands or parents-in-law, are crying for immediate justice in regard of dowry. What has law done to them? They are roaming freely treading upon the law yet law seems powerless helping such incidents to occur further more. Instead of ‘useless closure’; is it not a high time that all united and raised voice for ‘dowry closure’ forever?