Padma ("Lotus Blossom")
 Padma, The Wedding  Click Here for a Full-Figure View  Click Here for a Close-up Portrait
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A young bride of India stands adorned in her finest jewelry (in part her dowry), wearing perhaps her Mother's treasured red wedding sari, woven with gold, and its matching choli. At this time she becomes as the beautiful Goddess Lakshmi to her husband's Vishnu. The red mehndi (henna tattooing) that adorns her hands and feet is a 5000 year old women's tradition that celebrates this occasion. Female friends, family and in-laws gathered for this ritual process on a carefully chosen date prior to the wedding. As long as the stain lasts the new bride reportably does not have to do housework. And if her new husband cannot find his initials carefully hidden in the designs it is said his wife will control their marriage. It is a time of great hope and fear. Perhaps a young husband was chosen for her when she was a child, but she just met him. Perhaps an old man was chosen recently because he lost his wife and so accepted a smaller dowry and she has five sisters that her parents still need to find dowries for. Perhaps this is a rare modern marriage of her own choosing. Brides in the past have left their families to join their husband's home, and been pressured to prove their fertility as soon as possible. Will her mother-in-law be kind? Will she be able to finish the schooling she desires? What are the dreams she holds for tomorrow? For centuries in India there was no future for women outside of marriage, childbearing and rearing within her husband's extended family home, and no education. The Hindu union is a sacred spiritual ritual which makes marriage eternal and thus indissoluable. So there is no possibility of divorce despite abuse and widows with no support have no future. Unfortunately child marriage contributes to India's soaring birthrate (ave. age 16 for first conception), infant mortality, malnutrition, grinding poverty, illiteracy, and the child prostitution trade. In rural areas half the girls between 10-14 are already married. Girl babies are not desired and sometimes eliminated. The outlawed but deeply entrenched tradition of the dowry-based male chauvanist caste system has created a surge of "Bride-burnings" and dowry deaths, a result of rampant greed and desire for modern conveniences. Hindi cinema is remodeling sexual values, rape is increasing and the AIDS epidemic is exploding. |
