(This is based on a piece written by Chetan Bhagat in
website www.chetanbhagat.com.) :::::
"It isn’t just about Siya or this case. The problem is that this is representative of Indian parents even today, particularly in business families. Those ₹10-crore to ₹500-crore SME-type families who behave like little kings running their empires. This is a massive amount of money in India.
These families feel rich and big, unaware of the fact that they are small fries in a global pool of entrepreneurs, where we now even have a trillionaire.
These crorepatis hire an army of servants in cheap-labour land that is India.
They run their businesses exactly as their parents or grandparents did decades ago, with zero innovation, vision, R&D or ideas about changing the future. Usually, these are boring businesses like sanitary tiles, steel commodity parts, and chemical plants.
"Many are content with preserving what previous generations built rather than reinventing it. The business survives, but ambition often shifts from building better companies to maintaining family status."
With massive comfort at home and little innovation or drive at the office, these businessmen have little to occupy their minds productively. Instead, they channel their ambitions into social status rather than innovation.
They spend their time obsessing over vanity, displaying wealth, perceived respect in society, and seeking validation from other SME types.
"What better way to get that validation than by controlling your children and their pointless, lavish weddings?"
Chetan Bhagat further writes:
"You get to display your wealth, with a wedding budget that would put Elon Musk’s next venture to shame. You also get to show-off a compliant child—someone who married the person of your choice.
For at least a few moments, the hollow, regressive, and shallow business family gets validation from the world as they burn fireworks and crores at destination weddings, packing off their nubile daughters.
"Social media is replete with statements from other girls expressing empathy for Siya—yes, an alleged murderer— about the pressure she might have felt in simply calling off the wedding.
“We get it,” many progressive Gen-Z girls say when they hear that Siya could not tell her parents that she loved another man.
Kids grow up. They turn into adults. Adults fall in love and date.
Adults like to live their own lives. Free will, liberty, or agency over one’s own life is a fundamental human need. Revolutions have been fought over it, and people have died for it.
When will our Indian parents understand this? When will our business families realize that their children are not trophy cattle to be paraded for display?
If someone did kill Ketan, they deserve punishment. It is as simple as that.
Whether this particular case ultimately proves to be about family pressure is for the courts to determine. What it has undeniably done, however, is reignite a conversation that millions of young Indians immediately recognized:
.... how much control should parents continue to exercise over their adult children’s lives?
Apparently, according to police statements reported in the media, Siya did not simply call off the wedding (instead of allegedly killing Ketan) because she hesitated, believing that cancelling it would bring her parents too much “shame.”
So hesitant that she would rather kill the guy? Well, talk about the shame they are facing now.
And this is the reality of many Indian families !!
ends
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