Romeo on the rampage

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">Great art, literature, cinema and legends would not be the same without the Crime of Passion. Without it, there would be no <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Othello</span>, no Dante''s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Inferno</span>. But romanticising murderous love aside, cut out society''s obsession with passion and what do we have? <br /><br />A refusal to accept No as answer.Nothing romantic about it. Especially when it ends in slit throats, acid attacks, gory stabbings.<br /><br />In a post-graduate class at DU, psychoanalyst Rajat Mitra once asked the boys how many of them had obsessed about some girl, hung around outside her school/college or tried to ferret out personal details. <br /><br />Almost all hands went up. "But probably only one out of the 50 students wouldn''t be able to take No for an answer," says Mitra. "Most of us have the ability to deal with rejection in a healthy manner. We brood over it, reject women, abuse them, but eventually move on."<br /><br />When does a normal crush turn into pathological obsession, the starting point of a perfect passion crime? What pushes men and women to do the unthinkable,where passion overrides the dictates of reason and all caution and rational thought is thrown to the winds? <br /><br />Clinically speaking, there is no such thing as obsessive love in the psychiatrist''s book. Nimhans psychiatrist Y C Janardhan Reddy is categorical: "Obsessive Compulsive Disorders do not record any obsessive compulsion related to love. It''s more a case of delusion."<br /><br />Docs say it isn''t fair to look for an answer in psychiatry for all such crimes or deem all such criminals ''mentally ill''. So what are we to make of real- and reel-life cases of obsession? <br /><br />Obsession which manifests itself in murder... "Violence occurs as an extreme act of impulsiveness and a loss of inhibition," says Mohan Isaac of Nimhans. <br /><br />"There''s definitely a genetic predisposition, but environment and values - where you are taught not to take No for an answer - also play a role," says Mitra, who has worked with such offenders in Tihar.<br /><br />Often, there are enough clues that point to such behaviour. "These people are usually loners, shy and withdrawn, and have had no established relationships at any time," says Mitra. <br /><br />Also, potential victims often sense something is not right. "Women in such situations who have come to me always have a nagging intuitive fear that there''s something wrong, not normal."<br /><br />In police terminology, these are ''pointless crimes'', committed in the heat of the moment. Passion crimes, unlike serial rapes or killings, never get repeated. Delhi DCP (Crime) Deependra Pathak says usually there''s no remorse: offenders almost always blame the victim. <br /><br />Their usual response: ''<span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Pagal kar diya</span>,'' ''<span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Dimag kharab kar diya</span>''... Police say the great anonymous metro sprawl is making things worse. "There''s no psychological release. Human relationships are virtually evaporating, leading to latent aggression." <br /><br />Why is violence the first reaction to rejection? Well, surprise, it is never the first reaction. "First comes the inability to take rejection, then negotiation. When negotiation fails, violence occurs. My advice to women? Never negotiate as that gives an impression that a relationship exists," says Mitra.<br /><br />So much for obsessed lovers; why are we obsessed with crimes of passion? Because they are offences not normally committed by criminals, but by ordinary people: both sexes, all classes and races, non-entities and celebrities, school dropouts and PhDs. We get some notion of how people behave in extremis. When the heat is on.<br /><br />"There''s so much romance associated with chasing, persistence. These define the way we choose our relationships," says Mitra. In another class experiment, he asked students to define a best friend and a boyfriend/girlfriend. <br /><br />The best friend was described as ''reliable, someone who''s always there and supports you''. The lover? ''Someone who makes me shiver, go weak at the knees, makes me lose my mind.'' In a society which puts such a premium on passion, persistence is equated with love. <br /><br />"Persistence is not love," says Mitra. "But movies and society perpetuate the notion that if you persist, you will win the object of your desire. We are conditioned to believe that No actually means Yes. The only place where No means a No remains the dictionary."<br /><br />(<span style="" font-style:="" italic="">With inputs from Meghana Mathur, Bangalore</span>)</div> </div>