Related To My Lover - Femina

They're coming out slowly... just from a different closet. Aparna Gupta explores the phenomenon of cousins falling in love with each otherRicha and Ranvir * (names changed), have been together for two years. Both work in Mumbai, belong to Lucknow and their families have known each other since ages. Madly in love, they want to tie the knot. Both are from affluent families of the same community but herein lies the problem - Richa's mother and Ranvir's father are siblings... they're brother and sister.

A Struggle For Acceptance

Call it incest or inbreeding, for cousin lovers, it's all about love. A fast-paced lifestyle, prevalent indifference, unusual working hours - metros offer individuals space and anonymity. Siddharth introduces Gyani as his girlfriend and for five years, they've been living together. Rare questions on their future plans are dismissed with a "Parents are not agreeable". Their parents feign ignorance to persistently inquisitive relatives. Their mothers are sisters who, overwhelmed by social embarrassment, haven't spoken to each other even once in the last two years.

This new group of cousin lovers is struggling for acceptance. Hindus in northern India as a practice outlaw the consanguineous marriage by avoiding the same 'gothra' or patrilineal relationship between the probable bride and the groom. However Menarikam, marriage between uncle and niece or between cousins, is a common practice among Hindus in South India. Among many Hindu communities, the marriage of a brother's daughter with a sister's son is common. Murias and Bhils of North/Central India also practise cross- cousin marriage. Twenty per cent of marriages around the world are between first cousins: Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin married their first cousins. First-cousin marriages, while prohibited in half the United States, is legal in Canada and throughout Europe. In Egyptian royalty, even marriage between brother and sister was permitted to concentrate wealth and power in one family. Well, you can't appeal to Victorian morality; Queen Victoria married her first cousin.

"Armed with education and exposure, a person tends to question rituals and doesn't mind changing them. In metros, the social pressures towards conformity are not as great as in smaller towns. For cosmopolitans, it's the togetherness that matters more than social taboos," opines Samir Parikh, consultant psychiatrist, Max Health Centre.

What Health Issues?

Cousincouples.com, the international support website for cousin lovers, argues that sexual relations between two consenting adults (are) no one's business but their own. It's a far cry from reality in a society which shuns cousin couples. In the general population, the risk that a child will be born with a serious problem like spina bifida or cystic fibrosis is three per cent to four per cent; to that background risk, first cousins must add another 1.7 to 2.8 percentage points. "'It's unhealthy', my best friend said, on being told that my boyfriend is my first cousin," reveals Niti Garg*. "If your purpose is to prevent people with dangerous genes from marrying each other, why use a crude standard such as kinship? Why not test everybody for bad genes, ban marriage between carriers, and let cousins without bad genes marry each other? If you prefer to ban marriage among people in high-risk categories, why not start with fertile women over 40? What if we decide never to have any babies, will society accept us then?"

Catch-22 For Parents

For one year, parents (brothers) of one such couple tried to reason it out. They boycotted their children and tensions built up between the two brothers. Finally they relented. Parents of cousin lovers are in a catch-22 situation. "My son asked me if he could vote, then why couldn't he choose his partner? I could have accepted a girl from a different status, religion or even country, but how could I accept my sister's daughter as my 'bahu'? But do I have an option? If I oppose, I will lose my son," feels a helpless father.

And If It Doesn't Work?

You can move on from an ex-spouse or ex-lover, but there's no such thing as an ex-cousin. How are your parents and your ex's parents supposed to handle a nasty divorce or a break-up? Everybody will be waiting for things to go wrong just so they can say 'We told you so'. Dr Parikh says, "Cousins in love facing social stigmatisation are vulnerable to loneliness and sometimes, even guilt'. To each his own - after all, nothing is good or bad, it's the thought process that makes it so.

Consanguineous Marriage

When you marry blood relatives then it is consanguineous marriage. These couples are at an increased risk for autosomal recessive and multifactorial traits, including several congenital malformations. The usual risk of a serious disease or major malformation is 5 per cent, which is double the population risk. In the case of a pregnancy, detailed ultrasound scanning or special screening (in the case of a previous history of a particular problem) may be prudent.