Sara's poverty escape; Muslim-catholic interreligious marriage in India

 

 

“I fear for the safety of my step-brother and my father,” said Qatar-based Sara in a trembling tone to her friend speaking at the other end of the telephone line from Mumbai.  She was conveying her terrible news that she had feared for a long time - the elopement of his brother Bashir with his Hindu girl friend Sunita. The dangerous fallouts of the Hindu-Muslim love affairs in the highly volatile communal sensitive city of Mumbai are well documented in the several religious related riots that the city has witnessed in recent years.

If Sara had concerns over the safety of her family in Mumbai , she was perfectly justified in having them.

She had valid reasons for that as the entire locality in which Bashir and his family lived were Muslims while Sunita who lived a few meters away in another pre-dominant Hindu locality. The Hindu locality where burning with fire as the elopement of the Hindu girl with a Muslim boy.  Sara herself went through the cycle of nearly creating a communal riot through her love affair with Christopher Columbkar Vas seven years back.

Her escape route from Mumbai to Dubai was planned to perfection by her husband’s family.

Sara had a huge task to accomplish when she married Christopher Columbkar Vas. Theirs was a mixed religion marriage, a union involving not just union of two individuals from diverse backgrounds, class difference but from two different religions.

English and Hindi language was the unifying common factor. Making their families to accept their union and to bless them in walking and taking the first steps down the aisle was a difficult job which bogged them.

The opposition came not from the girl’s family but from the boy’s side.

A few factors weighted down the mind of the groom family- the age difference between the two of them- 13 years, her Muslim religion, the social status of her family- they were slum dwellers and a few more irritants needed to be set aside. Instead of allowing the tempers to blow hot and cold over their love affair, they took the flight from Mumbai to Dubai and it is in the sin-city that their love bloomed.

Christopher Columbkar Vas was bowled over by the smile of this shy teenage girl everything time  he was returning from church on Sundays. The casual smiles were pushed to the back burner, as the two  starting exchanging notes in Hindi. So they met for their first date.

Christopher Columbkar Vas overlooked the fact that when he kissed her on their first date her protruding front teeth were certainly an irritant and a disturbing factor for him, a person for whom  kissing was a seasonal game, which he had played with many partners over the years. But as he was turning into his late thirties, finding a life partner for him from his Mangalorean Christian community based in Mumbai and Karantaka was a difficult proposition for his family and friends.  His family scanned for good educated girls for him in their community but without success.

So Christopher Columbkar Vas the love affair was a blessing in disguise who had by now given up hopes of getting married.

So every time Sara smiled her face will take one to a scene from an English horror movie. But it was her glowing skin colour and her tender age for which Christopher Columbkar Vas fell for.

But the biggest obstacle for Christopher Columbkar Vas’s family was Sara’s religion.

Majority of the Muslims in India are looked down upon in society, only a few ones have broken and fraught off the dogged system, come out through the poverty which have followed them for generations. Only a minute number of Muslims have reached the upper echelons of Indian society and are enjoying the fruits of its economic growth. Most of the lower lefts over jobs are taken up by the poor Muslims in big cities like Mumbai.

Sara’s family migrated somewhere from Bangladesh and stayed  in a tin-roof structure in Mumbai. As illegal migrants into India, they easily assimilated into the Indian crowds and now into their third generation had by now become legal Indian citizens thanks to the vote bank politics of India.

 

But the tin roof structure in which they lived was constantly at the mercy of the Municipal authorities, like young Slumdog Millionaire actors from Mumbai houses have been razed by the authorities in Mumbai.

Her father was a carpenter and had two wives. An Indian Muslim can have three wives at a time, under the Mohammedan law which is applicable to Indian Muslims while the rest of the Indians can have only one wife at a time.

 

Sara and his two sisters stated along with his other step brother and sisters in a dwelling which they called home.
They grew witnessing constant fights between their mother and their step mother. They were not in agreement in sharing their man Mohammed Mushtaq and sometimes the fight was over sharing the money he brought home at the end of the day.

Poverty and its associated pangs made them wage a battle for survival. Getting a decent education was a mirage. Two of the elder sisters did not complete their elementary school education. But Mumbai which is known as the city of the dream gave them ample opportunities to chase their dreams.

One by one the girls went chasing their dreams; the two elders’ ones went chasing the petro dollars. The first one went to Bahrain the second one followed to Dubai the Sin city. In the City of sin Sara found money in the company of many man. But love and prestige was what is aspired. It was when Viajy came into his life the crystal ball which she had in her hand changed its trajectory.

She was determined to hit the right places and made sure its impact remain for long. Christopher Columbkar Vas was one of her many targets.

Christopher Columbkar Vas’s mother a devout catholic that she was brought up all her children in pious Christian ways and she did want her son to be lured by a Muslim woman. But what made her reluctantly accept her was Sara’s kneeled appeal to her not once but many times.

“ I will take good care of your son now and forever. Do not be worried on that count. I am converting myself to Christianity. I will learn the religion inside out. Christopher Columbkar Vas is also going to help me. I am trying to learn Konkani, so people in the Persian Gulf do not know that I was once a Muslim and from Mumbai. I will be a good obedient and faithful wife now and forever to Christopher Columbkar Vas.”

Five years later, if Sara had escaped from the fury and rage of his Muslim brothers in Mumbai to marry Christopher Columbkar Vas and life in the Sin City, his brother Bashir has no such alternatives. He is torn between his religion and his finance’s Hindu believes.

He knows that he is sitting on a potential time bomb ready to explode. It is a volatile situation for him and all the more is he and his family is vulnerable to the mob fury as they reside tin Mumbai which has seen many a Hindu-Muslim riots. Inter religious marriages between two communities have provided the spark to the communal fires.

Till then Sara remains a worries sister and a daughter. She successfully tamed the ruffled feathers of her Muslim brothers in Mumbai with her marriage to Christopher Columbkar Vas, whether he would be able to do it as and when he gets marries remains to be seen.

But for now the love birds are meeting secretly knowing that love secrets are hard to keep. The day Bashir’s love with a Hindu girl from the neighborhood become were the talk of the  town then the agonies of Bashir and his household would multiply. With the elopement the test has come for Bashir and families the next few days will a testing time for all related with blood ties with Bashir.