I shall pass over my initial intent of describing the sea, the hills, and the star on the Flashlight hike on Saturday and go straight to the thing that has most bugged me and made me angry all day. I heard on NPR about Indian marriage scam artists (particularly Punjabis). This is the way it works. Those sexy (=rich, at least by provincial standards) Indians who work abroad (known hereinafter as non-resident Indians, or NRIs) place an ad for a bride. They demand a dowry, often one higher than the bride's family can reasonably afford, and then disappear. There are variants of this, including additional shakedowns and trapping the wife in a culture where she does not speak the language, but I have described the basic outline.
What angers me is not the practice of the dowry, nor the arranged marriage, but the habit of demanding an outlay greater than the bride's family can afford. I can understand the richer of the two families displaying their wealth, but making the poorer of the two poorer still stinks of malice. Of course, the Hindu system of castes seems to share that mindset. It's an aristocratic one - the Greek word 'kalos' means both 'good' and 'beautiful'. The one consolation, I suppose, is that these jilted brides do not seem to be blamed for their misfortune, nor are they branded of questionable morals, as I fear many rigid Western Christian societies would.
