Man marries dog to lift curse BY News Desk

We have all heard the 'man bites dog' stories, but how about a real-life 'man marries dog' tale!

This one takes the biscuit, and it could only happen in India, the land of strange happenings.

You won't find this kind of love story between man and beast in even the ancient Indian manual.

Wedding took place for real during a traditional Hindu ceremony at a temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu on November 20, 2007, Hindustan Times reported. The groom in question was a 33-year-old Indian farmer named Selvakumar, and he married a female dog named Selvi.

He married his four legged bitch to atone for stoning two other dogs to death and stringing them up in a tree 15 years ago. He believed the act cursed him and he had been suffering ever since, the newspaper quoted him saying.

After he stoned the dogs to death he said his legs and hands got paralysed, he lost hearing in one ear, and his speech was impaired.

With doctors unable to help him, Selvakumar turned to an astrologer who told him he was cursed by the spirits of the dogs he had killed. He could undo the curse only if he married a dog and live with it, the soothsayer warned.

Family members chose a stray female dog that was then bathed and clothed for the wedding ceremony. Selvi, the bride, was brought to the temple by village women and a Hindu priest conducted the ceremony.

The paper published the (above} picture of Selvakumar sitting next to his canine bride bedecked in an orange sari and flower garland.

The paper said the groom and his family then had a feast, while the dog got a bun.

Selvi reportedly attempted a bolt -- apparently because of big crowds. But she was tracked down and returned to her new 'husband'.

"The dog is only for lifting the curse and after that, he plans to get a real bride," a friend of the groom told the newspaper.

The paper said deeply superstitious people in rural India often organize weddings to dogs and other animals, believing it can undo certain curses.

Female Genocide in India BY News Desk

India worships a score of goddesses seeking “shakti” (divine power}. The divine mother Durga and the Great Mother - Kali Ma are worshipped across the country by both male and female for strength.

However the hypocrisy of Indian society is pellucid as on one hand it worships women goddesses and on the other it doesn’t hesitate to kill these goddesses’ vivid manifestations.

Some ten million female births in India have been lost to abortion and sex selection over the past 20 years because of a traditional preference for boys.

The shocking report, published in the British Medical Journal, Lancet lays the blame squarely on the use of ultrasound screening, which tells families whether their child will be a boy or a girl.

The research, based on a national survey of more than one million households, found an unusual gender imbalance in the country, the study said adding the gender imbalance in India has been known for some time. It has caused a marriage crisis in rural areas where thousands of young men are failing to find brides.

The research, carried out by Prabhat Jha of St Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Research in Chandigarh, was published in the Lancet journal (Jan 2006).

They said prenatal selection and selective abortion caused the loss of 500,000 girls a year.

The research based on a national survey of 1.1 million households in 1998 claimed the "girl deficit" was more common among educated families irrespective of religions. The study found an alarming tendency to select boys when previous births were girls.

Prabhat Jha concluded conservative estimates suggest half a million girls were being lost each year. The practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, hence the figure of 10 million missing female births does not sound “unreasonable”, he added.

In most countries, women slightly outnumber men whereas research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were only 933 girls.

Traditionally female children are held inferior and a liability across the sub-continent .The region, a large agrarian society, considers boys more useful for farm work