For the sake of love..

This article:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Three-youths-held-for-raping-17-yr-old/articleshow/5184824.cms

gave me the shivers. To give a gist, this girl started dating a man who promised to marry her. He then raped her along with his friends and asked her to keep mum about the incident, all the time promising to marry her. The worst part about this story is that, this happened not once, but many times. And the whole time, the girl kept mum about it and maybe gave her consent also in the following incidents of the same gruesome nature. All this for what? A matrimonial promise?

This story defied all logic for me. Of course sitting in my home with my parents who would do anything to protect me, its hard to relate to a homeless orphan girl who was supporting herself with the help of various jobs. But still, even if I try to imagine, a man who got her raped by 3 of his friends before marriage, what kind of a life would he have given her after marriage? How come this thought didn't strike her the first time she got raped? What must she have gone through to allow something like this to happen a 2nd and a 3rd time before finally realizing that the man never intended to marry her? Maybe the fact that she is only 17 years old and not yet capable of taking proper decisions was a factor. Still, there is a much deeper psychological problem here.

What all are we ready to do for the sake of love? Wives put up with beating, torture... Just for the sake of their family, their children.. But even if we don't go that far, even if we see relationships at our age, we see that we put up with a lot. Only because we're scared of being lonely and we feel that we will get no one better. Over possessiveness, lack of compatibility, over critical behvaior, we all turn a blind eye towards this because we feel that "I've got it much better than the others". Why do we sell ourselves so short? Why do we have such a low self-confidence? Each and every person on this planet DESERVES to be with a person who can treat them as well as they are capable of treating the other person. It's a God given right. And if you aren't getting that, its better to just walk out and say goodbye.

Stand for yourself, stand for your rights. Where there's true love, there needn't be any fight for rights. But all of us may not be so lucky.. At least we can ensure that we get the basic respect that we deserve...