Being gay is simply not a Gender Identity Disorder (GID), as I so would love to believe. Being one is beyond the bound of natural or supernatural hypothesis. Being one is not chosen. You know you are gay when you feel like one.
Dowry has become a very common word and it is practiced in Indian society without any inhibitions or ill feelings. Dowry is a payment from the bride's family to the groom or groom's family at the time of marriage. Upon marriage, daughters are given all modern household gadgetry as dowry such as furniture, crockery, electrical appliances (in recent years refrigerators, television etc.) as well as personal items of clothing, jewellery and cash. Some parents also give a car among dowry items. The value of the dowry depends on the jobs the grooms may be holding at the time of marriage, ranging from 250,000 Yen to 5 million Yen or more in a country where a basic graduate's salary starts from 6,250 Yen (with the exception of medical and engineering graduates.) The fact is that no good alliance can be made without offering the above-mentioned gifts. This system is more rigid in the northern Hindi-speaking region consisting of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Haryana states, although it is against the law. The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, amended in 1984 and 1986, treats the offence of dowry as cognizable and non-bailable, giving and taking dowry is prohibited, cruelty of others to the woman driving her to suicide is punished. Inquiries are made into any woman's suicide or death in suspicious circumstances within seven years of her marriage. You can find a lot of information on this social evil on the Internet and in books available on women's issues in India. In fact, there are a number of books available in our ICU library itself. In this paper, I would like to mention my own family's experience regarding dowry at the time of my elder sister's marriage.
"If you do not contribute to the army, you are not a man" I was shocked to hear this from my Korean friend's mother. I had been in South Korea last year as an exchange student to Ewha Womans University. Ewha is a woman's school as it can be seen by the name, but men can also study if they use exchange program. A few months had passed since I arrived at Korea and I was beginning to realize many similarities between Korea and Japan, so I felt a feeling of discomfort. For example, in terms of language, word order is the same, and particle such as wa, ga, wo, mo are used the same. The concept of "man" however, is quite different in Korea and Japan. Then, why is "man" perceived different?