When Did Honest Conversations Become Harder Than Violence?

For the last few days, I have been disturbed.

Not because another murder has taken place. Sadly, India has witnessed many such tragedies before. What has unsettled me is something much deeper. Every time I read about another young couple caught in a shocking crime, I find myself asking the same question: How does an educated young person reach a point where ending a human life appears easier than speaking the truth?

I am not writing about one particular case. The courts will decide who is guilty and who is not. My concern is something larger than any individual incident. It is about us—our families, our children and the emotional world we are creating for them.

Perhaps this question troubles me so much because, more than forty years ago, I was also a young woman in love.

I met my husband, in 1983. Whenever I tell our story, people assume that my parents opposed our marriage because I belonged to a Rajput family and he was Punjabi. That explanation is too simplistic. My father was a highly educated man. The real issue was not caste. Like most parents of his generation, he genuinely believed that children, no matter how educated they were, lacked the experience to make such an important decision. I was also the youngest in the family. In my parents’ eyes, I was still their little girl.

Today, as a mother of two daughters, I understand that feeling far better than I did then.

Parents carry a responsibility that children often do not see. They worry about a future that has not yet arrived. They fear pain that has not yet happened. Their intention is usually protection, although sometimes that protection begins to feel like control.

There was no opposition from my husband’s family. The struggle existed entirely on my side. It took almost six years to convince my parents. Those years were filled with conversations, disagreements, tears, persuasion and long periods of silence. My husband patiently met members of my family, answered every difficult question and slowly earned their trust. I also made my position clear. I told my parents that if they could not accept Vikram, I would respect their decision, but I would not marry anyone else.

Personality, emotional maturity, values, family relationships, peer influence and individual choices all play a part.

At the same time, I also think parents need to ask themselves some uncomfortable questions. Have we confused being a friend with being a parent? Have we become so afraid of upsetting our children that we no longer guide them?

Or have some of us gone to the opposite extreme and created homes where children fear telling the truth? Neither extreme is healthy.

Children do not need parents who monitor every message, nor do they need parents who proudly say, “My child can do whatever they want.” They need something much more difficult to provide. They need parents who will listen without humiliation, guide without domination and remain calm enough that a child can admit a mistake before that mistake grows into a tragedy.

My own mother had no mobile phone, no GPS, no social media and no access to my private life. Yet long before I admitted I was in love, she sensed that something had changed. Today many parents know exactly where their children are every minute of the day, yet have no idea what is happening inside their minds. Somewhere between information and understanding, we seem to have lost something important.

As I look at my own daughters, I know I cannot protect them from every disappointment. I cannot choose every relationship for them or solve every problem they will face. But I hope I have given them one thing—the confidence that no truth is too frightening to bring home.

Perhaps that is the lesson these painful incidents leave us with. Not that we should become more suspicious of our children. Not that we should become more permissive. But that we should build families where honesty is never more frightening than silence.

Because every tragedy does not begin with violence. Sometimes it begins much earlier, on the day a son or daughter decides, “I cannot tell my parents the truth.”

That is the conversation we cannot afford to lose.