The headline that was a Joke
I watched as the story hopped off the broad sheets and spun into social media titter, soon trending globally on Facebook - as a joke. The headline said it all - Groom Has Seizure At Wedding, Bride Marries Guest Instead. The details were juice for water cooler and paan stall banter.
Groom Jugal Kishore was reaching out to garland bride Indira with the varmala when he collapsed in an epileptic seizure.
This is how Inquisitr went on to tell the story - “Indira became enraged that Jugal and his family had kept his epilepsy a secret from her and her family. But since everything necessary for a wedding was already in place, by golly, there was going to be a wedding that day. So she asked the crowd if anyone was willing to ‘step up,’ so to speak”. By the time Jugal Kishore recovered and returned to the mandap, Indira had married another guest at the wedding. And the joke ends with the groom’s family fighting the bride’s relatives with plates and spoons.
This is not the first time that had tragedy spun out as a laugh. Nor is it the first time that epilepsy had grappled with stigma.
The stigma with epilepsy
It has been a 100 years since epilepsy was explained and understood scientifically, but even 100 long years haven’t been enough to shake the illness off superstition and stigma, says Dr Manjari Tripathi, Neurologist, AIIMS. Till 1997, a spouse being epileptic was grounds for divorce, but with the intervention of doctors and patients, legislation was changed. Now, only non-disclosure of the disease before marriage is deemed “cheating” and therefore valid ground for divorce.
So why didn’t Jugal Kishore inform Indira and her family about his epilepsy? Quite simply because he knew that he would never find a bride in a community where seizures are seen as madness, as being possessed. Where epileptics are seen as people who can never have kids, nor a long life.
The TRUTH
- Epilepsy can be treated and symptoms can be 70% controlled.
- It does NOT spread through contact from person to person.
- It cannot be genetically transmitted to children.
- Most epilepsy patients bear healthy children.
It can happen to anyone
What Indira did not consider was that Jugal may not have been epileptic at all. The excitement, stress and anxiety of the frenetic Indian wedding may have triggered what Dr Tripathi calls “acute symptomatic seizure”. Should Indira have waited to find out? Would she have hurried to garland another man, had Jugal had had an asthmatic attack or a headache? Should she have known that an epileptic seizure can happen to anyone at any age - that even she is not immune?
Kishore filed an FIR against Indira’s family. But the bigger crime against epilepsy is the stigma leading to lack of employment and marriage opportunities, depression and a high suicide rate among patients.
Dr Tripathi feels that until epilepsy awareness programs are not taken up by the government, stories like this one will continue to humour more than hurt.
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