When Love turns Villainous- A murder that shocked Kerala!

Like all cultures  Kerala too has had great love  stories like Changampuzha’s ‘Ramanan’ or Basheer’s tales or Madhavikutty’s novels which have all idealized love. But, if the same love is spurned it can be a tragedy, and even lead to a suicide out of deep sorrow. However, recently love turned villainous with a shocking incident that happened in Chengannur. A crime, a murder most foul, happened in broad daylight in all its audacity shocking the whole state.

All this just because the girl denied the love of the man with whom she had a brief affair. Rejection turned into fury for the scorned lover. The fury turned into revenge. He stabbed her thrice and knifed her father to death at Mazhukeer, near Chengannur.

The Incident in brief…

According to the police, Rahul, a final year engineering student at Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, was in love with Varsha, an MBA student of Mar Athanasius College for Advanced Studies, Tiruvalla. However, Varsha jilted Rahul for another man. Unable to bear Rahul’s repeated advances, Varsha’s father had lodged a complaint with the Chengannur CI who had warned Rahul that he would be arrested if he disturbed Varsha again. Rahul, who was livid with rage at Varsha for continuing her affair, knocked down the motorcycle on which she and her father were travelling around 6 am on Tuesday and stabbed Varsha in the back three times. Father, who came to the aid of his daughter, was stabbed twice. Varsha is still battling for life in a private hospital at Thiruvalla. Rahul is now under police custody.

What has happened to this love? I have heard that love makes one go mad, is this incident so? No, love is still the same feeling as it was. What happened is that, the people who were in love have changed the way they see love. Love can’t be grabbed and this is something that most lovers realise once they don’t feel the love is being reciprocated.

Kerala is a state rich with many films, poems and stories of love and love failures. Most films show that the hero and the heroine staying strong till the end for love despite all barriers and difficulties. The love, this boy felt towards this girl is not something wrong. But it was a one-way love. Without realising this fact, the love blinded him to do such a brutal act. What did he gain?

Is it our education system or lifestyle or is it the family atmosphere that has gone wrong? What one learns and receives from the home is what makes one good or bad. The media has influenced our family atmosphere so strongly and so has cinema. The morals that old movies gave out is no more existing in these new generation movies. The Chengannur incident is one good example of how wrong thinking affects the generation of today. Where is our world leading us to? Has love, the emotion, lost its meaning, has the same emotions that poets of Kerala sang couplets about gone?

Few questions: Will  crimes of passion, revenge and murder happen more in Kerala now? What do you think? Are you worried the youth of the state will make such drastic steps so openly?