Response from Air India

It was nice to receive a response to my email letter to Air India. It was a personal response to the query, which is good. May be they really could not do much about these things, as they say. I am not sure if I would choose the airline, the next time I have the option of using it. But you never know how this response influences my choice of flight.

I reached Air India through Consumer Online Resource and Empowerment Centre. I am not sure if this would be effective for everything, but I guess for government companies, this forum is useful.

The response went as follows:

Dear Mr. A,

We have your mail dated Sep 03, 08 addressed to the Manager, Dept of Complaint Redressal Cell, CORE Centre.

We sincerely regret the inconvenience faced by you due to the dysfunctional In- flight Entertainment system on our flight from Mumbai to New York.

As you maybe aware, our new state- of- the- art aircraft are fitted with the latest on board facilities that are fully computerised. Electronic failures, you will appreciate are unpredictable and can affect the best of devices. In this case, due to passengers giving multiple commands the system hangs up which results in the impairment of the functioning of the Entertainment system / overhead lights or seat recline functions. Unfortunately, despite the rebooting by the crew if it still remains non operational, these defects can only be corrected by our Engineering department when the aircraft returns to the base station Mumbai or New York. Nonetheless, the same was rectified by our personnel at New York.

We thank you for your understanding and trust you will not deny us the pleasure of being of service to you in the near future.

With kind regards

Yours sincerely,
...

Dowry

As I reach my 25th birthday, I kind of feel that I am crossing an important threshold. There would be expectations from me that I would have to meet. Not that this wasn’t the case before, but it would be more so now.

The time has also come when your friends start getting married. I have attended a couple of these weddings and had to miss some others due to other commitments. Though I am a little disappointed at having to miss these, I know there are many more to come.

One important question about weddings that gets discussed is the amount of dowry that is involved. There has been news that the demand for MBAs like me has gone down and that the dowry amounts have decreased. The question of dowry is becoming a little irrelevant as the culture of love marriages is increasing. As I understand, there is no concept of demanding a dowry in love marriages though I am not too sure, but that is what I have heard.

I thought that I should write a post about my view since that ways I would be clearer about my thought. I am not saying this just because it is the ‘right’ thing to say. In fact, it might not be the thing which everyone says i.e. “Taking and giving dowry is wrong / a crime”. I am of the view that demanding dowry is a big sin, but taking dowry is not. To my mind there is a subtle difference.

Demanding is when you negotiate with the girl’s family about the amount they would spend in the marriage and what you would get. Taking is to take whatever is given to the girl by her parents. Obviously, if you demand and then take, the taking does not justifying the demanding.

The idea is that one should not demand and neither expect anything as dowry. Even if the parents want to give a large dowry, one should try and convince them to give nothing or as low an amount as possible. One should show that there is nothing that you require and there is ample in your family to take care of all the needs of your to-be-wife. Employ any method to try and lower the dowry.

But still the parents of the girl have a right to give what they want to, to their daughter. Just as parents work hard for their sons, they do so for their daughters. Their love for their daughters might entail the want to give her everything that would make her life comfortable.

When one gives a gift to a friend, does it happen only when the friend cannot afford something? Gifts are a way of showing that you care. It is something you want to do, even though you can get away without doing it. Why can’t a similar case exist in the case of dowry? Giving even though one need not for there are no demands or expectations.

I understand that this is not so black and white. There may be demands or expectations in the mind and the justification given could be that we are just taking what is being offered. The social pressure would automatically lead to an expectation and the case would be that the boy's side does not even have to demand (the girl's side has to fulfill the unsaid expectation). In that case, you are deceiving yourself. And this might be the reason that a blanket ban on giving and taking of dowry is kind of justified.

Abortion and dowry are very connected. Female feticide in India happens mainly because of the huge expenses that are related with the marriage of the daughter. I firmly believe that any sin that is associated with these abortions would have to be shared by the people in the society that demand dowry.