dowry and infanticide...

this morning as has been the previous saturday mornings, we tried to catch the jusco bus. woke up at 7.30 and get myself, kedar, and may as the next persons queuing after karma from bhutan. on the nearly 20 minutes ride, i had a brief chat with vijay from india. he is married and expecting his second baby in the next few months. he has been working in computer graphics as a technical director for local company in mumbai. he told me how exhaustive yet exciting his job was. it takes possibly more than 2 years to come up with a good animated movies such as monster inc., and shrek. and another interesting fact in the industry is, they count the milestones by seconds like "how many seconds [of movie] u can finish in a week?".

i then asked him about the new member of his family. "it's a she? or it's a he?". "i dont know" he said. "oh, u did not try to find out?" i asked. "well, it's kinda illegal in india to find out the sex of your baby before born". and i found myself surprised, and rapidly replied him "why?". "in suburban area, people prefers a baby boy over a baby girl. because, when u have a daughter and she is getting married, the bride's family is responsible to give money to the groom or his family. thus, people tend to kill a baby girl before born. it's like an abortion".

and it is so happened that late in this evening, i read an example of job interview document from the network public folder, and in one of the answers of the interviewee (he is an indian) is regarding the practices mentioned above. it is said that "dowry and infanticide are still a common practice in suburbans of india".

from word's thesaurus:
dowry: (n). an amount of money or property given in some societies by a bride's family to her bridegroom or his family when she marries.
infanticide: (n). the practice of killing new born babies.

unfair? maybe.