Present Day Romance Tragedy: Romeo and Juliet Style

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!  I hope you are in the mood for romance because today we are going to explore forbidden Love and how overcoming some of our cultural taboos surrounding it can inspire Hope and even lead to World Peace.  Love is very powerful. Are you familiar with William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” you probably are. Its one of the most famous tragic love story of all time but I’ll do a quick summary — The setting — Verona, Italy. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet at a party and its love at first site. However, their families were sworn enemies. Despite all that they decide to get married in secret. Lots of things happen and Romeo ends up killing Juliet’s cousin in a fit of rage, rather than being tried and jailed for his offense he is simply banished from Verona. A different time I suppose. Juliet, desperate to be with her beloved Romeo, takes a potion that was supposed to simulate her death.  Romeo, unaware of the plan, hears news of her death and returns to Verona. Seeing her lying there he takes his own life right beside her. Of course she wasn’t dead and upon waking she finds Romeo dead and subsequently takes her own life.  The reason I’m telling all this is to emphasize the high cost of hatred and division. You see it in West Side Story and many other famously tragic plays and movies but the bottom line is, if the elements of hatred and shame were missing, there would be no story. For the sake of entertainment value that would be a bummer but for the sake of peace it’s another matter entirely.  So, if you are the kind of person who understands that love can happen across cultures, or within different religions and that the penalty for crossing these boundaries should not lead to death, but in fact they might even lead to peace on an epic scale…then you are in the right place.  Entering stage left is David Evans…. David Evans – It all happened suddenly in 1993. I read an article in the Guardian of an Indian man who hanged his son in public because he married, a forbidden marriage bringing shame to the village; bringing shame to the families.  That’s David Evans, author of the book Present Day Romance Tragedy: Romeo and Juliet Style and 1993 was a pivotal time, which we’ll get into in a second. David Evans – And the keyword really is shame brought by the children on their parents and the society and it leads to an impossible situation for the parents.  As we’ll see, nothing is impossible but that article led him down the road of discovering all kinds of public deaths in the name of forbidden love. Right or wrong, in some cultures death was an acceptable form of punishment for anyone breaking this law. You murder someone in America and depending on the state, you could be put to death. Same thing for marrying the wrong person if you are a member of certain cultures. David Evans – I have a friend in Delhi who is interested in the same topic and sent me newspaper clippings about similar circumstances and this formed the basis of material that I could start a PHD thesis along the line of Romance Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet Style. That brought me in contact with all the wonderful literature of different cultures about stories of Romeo and Juliet Style which are in every culture.  And, as you might expect he compiled all the stories he found into a book making it extremely convenient for us to read and learn. The book is about a romance tragedy, about lovers who would die for each other rather than be separated. The is particular focus on India but there are plenty of fascinating stories of social progress in relation to forbidden Love that have implications for us all. And not all the stories are tragic, well…most are but not this one.  David Evans – There’s only one ac