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Natasha Badhwar
I was a teenager when I looked at the newspaper one morning and saw a photo of three sisters who had died by suicide by hanging themselves from the ceiling fan in their home in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The younger sisters were closer to my own age. The photo had been clicked before the bodies were taken down — the girls were suspended in mid-air, their necks broken, their faces recognisable. The image has been impossible to forget.
The accompanying text narrated a story of the family’s economic struggle and their anxiety over their inability to arrange dowry for their daughters’ marriage according to community norms. The young women had executed a suicide pact to relieve their parents of the socio-cultural burden of raising daughters in a society where they are perceived as an encumbrance and a potential risk to the honour of the family.