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Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
Jan. 21, 2013: Krishna, 14, poses with her four-month-old baby Alok and husband Kishan Gopal, 16, inside the living room of their house in a village near Baran, Rajasthan.
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
Jan. 21, 2013: Gopal Kishan plays with baby Alok.
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters, file
May 16, 2010: Then-13-year-old Kishan Gopal, right, returns home with his 11-year-old newlywed wife Krishna, left, in a village near Kota, Rajasthan.
Reuters photographer Danish Siddiqui first met Krishna and Kishan Gopal on their wedding day, May 16, 2010. The groom was 13 years old, his bride just 11.
The legal age for marriage in India is 18 but weddings like theirs are common, especially in poor, rural areas where girls in particular are married off young.
Siddiqui has been visiting the young couple at their home in the desert state of Rajasthan every year since they were married, documenting the changes in their relationship and their surroundings. In a post on Reuters' Photographers Blog, he takes up the story:
When I went to their house last week I was greeted by the loud wailing of a baby. It was their four-month-old son Alok, which means enlightenment in Hindi. Last year when I visited them, I learned that Krishna, the child bride, was seven months pregnant. I wasn't surprised at all but out of curiosity I asked Gopal, her husband, why he was in such a hurry to expand the family. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Nothing else to do, no work, life is so boring." I was a bit taken aback.
Those like me who live in big cities plan meticulously before taking the plunge into parenthood. And here this teenager was telling me that he wanted to have a child and risk his young wife’s life because of boredom. That, again, is a different India.
When I visited, I was happy that the parents, their family and even the neighbors were enjoying the presence of the little boy. Gopal told me that his wife was nearly on her deathbed after the delivery last year and her being alive now is nothing less than a miracle.
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters, file
July 17, 2012: Gopal Kishan, then aged 15, listens to songs on his mobile phone as his father looks on at their soybean field on the outskirts of his village.
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
Jan. 21, 2013: Krishna sits with her four-month-old baby Alok outside her house.
When I asked the 14-year-old mother if she’s happy she had a baby boy, Krishna nodded her head and said, "I wanted a girl but its okay now." I was surprised by her response, as most people in both Indian cities and villages prefer boys over girls who they see as assets as opposed to girls who they consider liabilities or dependents.
During my visit, I noticed that 17-year-old Gopal had changed in the last couple of years. He started consuming alcohol a lot.
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
Jan. 21, 2013: Gopal Kishan drinks liquor at a roadside restaurant on the outskirts of his village.
He hasn't got any work, as even the soybean fields which his family owns are not that fertile now. The water level in their fields has gone down, resulting in irrigation problems. This time when I was in the village, Krishna broke down after her husband came home drunk and was trying to carry the baby. She was scared Gopal might drop his son.
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
Jan. 21, 2013: Krishna breaks down after her husband came home drunk.
I stayed with the couple for a day and then took them out of the village to shoot some portraits. It was the first time in four months that Krishna was stepping out.
I took the opportunity to ask Gopal about his future plans. He told me that for his family's survival he needs to move out of the village and try to find some work in the city. When I asked him if he plans to have another baby he told me his first experience was scary enough for him and his wife.
As I left the small village, the only thing which bothered me was the future of four-month old Alok. Would he go down the same route his parents took or would he bend societal norms to carve a separate path for himself and his future partner?
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters
July 17, 2012: Krishna, then aged 13, stands with Kishan Gopal, then 15, inside a newly constructed room at her house.
For more visit the Reuters' Photographers Blog.
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Leave a Comment:
Suffer fools gladly!
Children having babies because "there's no work, nothing to do....." ????? I hope we don't try to solve this with American tax dollars.
I thought I was young when I got married and had a baby. This goes to show No matter how much you have or How old you are if you have a baby GROW UP PERIOD!!!!!
Wow, Rachel M. Katzab, you are indeed a beautiful woman and your husband must be proud to have such a sweet wife, best friend, and mother of his children in his life. I wish I could be in that kind of position myself in my own life with a woman.
Nothing to do, NO JOB!, life is boring, but he has a cell phone, let me see, oh yea I know what I can do, I'll impregnate my wife and add to the already stressed population!! Yep, thats it! Another mouth he is UNABLE to feed!!!
A child raising a child with a husband not much older with no clue and job resorting to alcohol, the future isn't very bright for this family stuck in poverty.
thats just wrong no matter what backwards country your in....
bob-2476682 comment #5.10
Actually India has been a free and independent nation since 1947 thanks to the efforts of Ghandi and others, but, yes, they were under the colonialism of both the Dutch and the British for many years prior and it has left a lasting impression on Indian culture and outlook.
The hubby looks like the Monkey King.
To "grilledcheesesandwich" and "gsp2"
Please, please, please, take advantage of the medical benefits you are paying for through your respective jobs. Birth control can do wonders for those psychotic rants each of you TROLLS are suffering from.
gsp2: Where on your pay stub does it state that YOU specifically are paying for Allison Shaw's birth control?? Maybe if you stopped working 12 hour days just for the hell of it, and ranting about having to work said hours, you might be able to focus on the topic story.
grilledcheesesandwich: Whatever you are putting in your "grilled cheese sandwich" needs to be tweaked a little bit. You are way to angry...those birth control pillls will definitely help.
If you have any input regarding the article...I would like to hear it. If not, go to work or better yet make an appointment at your nearest clinic your free birth control is waiting for you...you know that birth control YOU work so hard for!
Send her to America---she can get food stamps and all the benefits----the same as 20,000,000 illegal Mexicans
Not sure I agree with the thought that "these are poor, rural, INdians who no no better"....c'mon! It's not like they haven't seen others around them making this SAME mistake of marrying before puberty and having children BEFORE getting a job...did they expect someone else to take care of them? Did they think the money was going to fall from the trees? Even uneducated, farm people know better. One doesn't need a formal education to figure the facts of life out.
On a sidenote: baby is adorable but why dress him in a pink outfit? And don't tell me they couldn't afford any other color...we all know pink fabric is NOT more expensive than blue, green, brown, red, black, yellow, or gray. And if this is a handmedown outfit, then why in the heck didn't they give them boy clothes??
I can tell you have never been to India. I have and to Pakistan (which is no better). They really really do not know any better, to say that they should look at others and get a clue is insane, everyone around them is in the same predicament. Money, what is that, trees, what is that??? You are looking at this through an American point of view. My parents lived in Pakistan back in the 70's and my mother use to say the Pakistani men were arrogant in their stupidity.
LOL and the pink bothers you!!!! LOL Only we Americans believe that pink is a girls color. It might have been a hand-me-down or they might have found it in the garbage. Anyway they got it they were probably thankful that they had something to put on the baby. You really have NO idea just how poor, how ignorant, how uneducated they really are.
You are worried about what color clothes this baby is wearing? Is this one of the main issues you have to comment upon? Do you realize how absolutely shallow and condescending you sound? I am glad that they have clothes to put on this baby, period.
Yuk. The whole idea is disgusting. Babies having babies? The young mommy, in particular, looks miserable. The young daddy looks like a full-of-himself punk. Abortion clinics would probably do a roaring business there. If they can afford cell phones and alcohol, they can afford abortions. Let India's young women grow up free of the threat of rape, forced child-hood marriage, and forced adolescent childbirth.
why doesn't someone like Bill Gates, who rips off Americans to inoculate third-world infants, use some of that money to give these desperate some birth control or sterilization options? The solutions are complex but eliminating breeding by these poor ignorant children should be a start to solving hunger, disease, brutality, etc.
100 Bill Gates wouldn't solve this. It's not the monetary poverty that's doing it, it's the selfish 'right' to have your shot at 'doing it to someone else'. Certain ancient news indicates that selfish natures, some alleging themselves to represent culture and religious rectitude, have so inured the belief of unchallenged catamitism into the population as to sate the appetite of every enemy that ever lived. Does anyone really expect children who have been taught very early to quietly accept 'touching', to autonomously create change for their own children? It could happen, there is a snowball's chance in India that a child can find ever so instantly the maturity to not pass it on. Hurt children learn to make others (smaller than themselves) hurt. At last, king over you, at least. Where were his parents or hers - or any responsible 'adult' at all! - while this person was forcing a 10 year old, perhaps for the first time, or was he the helpless, innocent jackal at someone else's feast? 'Nuff said, angry and sad have both been rather worn out.
After reading all of your posts, it's easy to see why our country is in freefall. Everybody plays loose with the facts to support their own agenda.
I feel especially sorry for Ook Ook Jones, who seems to have lost all sense of humanity. Sounds like he's fallen to the level of the subhumans in India who raped, sodomized, tortured and killed the young woman on the bus...............
Better to put a bullet in your own head than to sink to this depth. Here's hoping most of his rant is just BS bluster meant to impress the other frat boys online.
pitiful. lets see, i have no job, a shack of a home, I make babies when Im bored... oh, but I have the resources to pay for a phone and liquer... You can call is culture issues, blame governments, and poverty, but this is just plain poor upbrining, resulting in another generation of ignorance in that country. pathetic.
I need to stop reading thenews for a while, with pollution, mass shootings, child abductions, corrupt governments and such its starting to become hard for me to be happy. :(
this crap goes on every where................she's married off asap to get rid of her and so is the boy......only in this country the reasons may be different the outcome is the same..........lets all set our money on fire and just do what we do...............to just make a good world for every one ha ha ha!!
Cats have better family planning. At least they can go find humans for help.
The Hispanic tradition is coming out party at 15, marriage, and a child at 16. Works for them. In face, many women go to school and even college after having children. Raising children is a family affair with grandmother in the 30's providing much support. We europeans, on the other hand, are dying off. Thank you crazy feminists for your self-centeredness and indulgence.
What a grisly, hideous future awaits this 'family'. Perhaps it could be stopped in this generation, and young Gopal has been promised work for which he is skilled, and will go ahead to prepare a place before sending for the only family he will ever have. Perhaps he has even approached his parents and hers for the little patch of hand watered ground that will provide the grandson and his mother food until he can send for them. Perhaps he has been assured that his wife will be trained to earn money while this only son is educated in a special school where the children live away from their parents. Certainly, there is a resigned hope for herself in Krisha's acquiescence to a boy child. Real, tragic, frightful possibility of a selfish person knowing his family and hers well enough to threaten to come back alone.
Makes me wonder about age of first marriage statistics in agrarian societies throughout history. Someone somewhere has probably done a study on that.