Kultali: In a quiet hamlet deep inside Sundarbans, where mangrove forests guard a maze of rivers and traditions run long and deep, two young women stood before a village temple and chose each other for life.

Professional dancers Riya Sardar and Rakhi Naskar, both in their early twenties, tied the knot at the Paler Chak temple in Jalaberia in Kultali block, on November 4, in a ceremony that drew hundreds of villagers who ululated, blew conch shells and blessed the couple.

In a country where same sex marriages have no legal sanction and the issue is still pending before the Supreme Court, the wedding was a quiet rebellion rooted more in affection than activism. It unfolded in a socially conservative part of the Sundarbans, where such public assertions are unusual.

Yet on that afternoon,

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