Who do not take dowry and never make the headlines.

When Nisha Sharma brought her dowry-monger of a fiancé to justice, she became media's favourite maiden.
An icon for young women, a case study for ladies' forums and the torch-bearer of the Indian middleclass girl's cause.

But there are a few guys out there who do not take dowry and never make the headlines.

Like this young NRI software engineer who gives Hyderabad Times an account (on the condition of anonymity) of how his marriage ended in a disaster.

And he believes it's because he took no dowry.

"I am a young software engineer, well settled in the US . I had it all, a decent apartment, a nice car, a good job and an above average pay check."

"I was perhaps a prize catch, a part of the growing tribe of 'NRI techies' in the US . After a trip to India , to 'see' a girl selected by my parents, we got married in the traditional way. No dowry was asked for, given or received."

"After the new bride joined me in the US , small tiffs started erupting over little nothings. Soon the 'usual' tiffs erupted into bigger brawls."

"About two years into the marriage, the (now ex) wife and her parents arm-twisted me into sponsoring her education in a town about 100 miles from where I lived and worked."

"She then moved there, ostensibly to pursue her ambition of getting a US degree. I was left leading a bachelor's life while the wife whose visa and Green Card I had sponsored lived hundred miles away."

"I shouldn't have been surprised when, one evening, a courier knocked on my door to deliver the divorce notice from the wife!"

"I can't help thinking that meticulous planning had gone into that action. She ensured that she had moved her belongings including jewels, personal belongings and stuff in the pretext of taking them for our impending trip to India ."

"Her dad, a senior bureaucrat, had made an 'official' trip to the US a few months before that, to supposedly to patch things up between us."

"I was in a quandary. I would have to prepare myself to grapple with notorious American lawyers and I wasn't ready! Without a pre-nuptial agreement, a divorce in the US can leave the earning member of the family extremely vulnerable."

"In a typical filmy style, the ex-wife's lawyer, demanded a hundred thousand dollars to settle the case out of court. To throw salt on my wounds, the ex-wife, during a mediation debate threatened to file a dowry lawsuit in India if I did not meet her demands!"

The practice of young NRIs demanding 40 to 50 lakh as dowry is rampant in AP.

The narrator of this account claims at the end of his ugly divorce, he was left feeling that if he had demanded that amount from his wife's parents, he could perhaps have thrown it back at the ex and walked away with only a bruised ego