Water scarcity looms with a relentless heat wave.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURU: India is facing a long, hard drought, and people are doing some bizarre acts to relieve themselves of the relentless heat wave.
In a recent shocking incident in Jharkhand, a 55-year old man was beheaded by a group of supernatural bigots for better harvest and rain.
According to a report that appeared in The New Indian Express, Thepa Kharia was beheaded by Orkas, a group of superstitious practitioners and his head was buried in the farm as part of their bizarre practice.
Police officer Ajay Kumar Thakur was quoted by The Hindustan Times saying the Orkas broke into Kharia’s house and beheaded him and fled with his head.
He added that Orkas become active during the days just before the monsoon but nobody in the village dare to lodge a complaint against them. The police had to force Kharia’s family to file an FIR.
Jharkhand has registered a record temperature of 47 degrees Celsius this summer and the beheading of Kharia shows an archaic practice making its way back into the state.
Another strange practice was reported by Reuters in a village in Maharashtra, where villagers resort to polygamy for the sake of drinking water. According to the report, the village has only two wells and women from the hamlet wait for hours to fill their buckets.
To get more access to water, Sakharam Bhagat, 66, married thrice so that when one of his wives cook food two of them can stand in the queue and bring water. Bhagat, who is a daily wage worker, was quoted by Reuters saying “I had to have someone to bring us water, and marrying again was the only option. My first wife was busy with the kids. When my second wife fell sick and was unable to fetch water, I married a third.”
The practice of ‘water wives’ has become common among the villagers due to the scarcity of drinking water which is triggered by the severe drought the state has witnessed since decades.
Namdeo, another villager who has two wives, was quoted saying “It is not easy to have a big family when there is no water.”
Bhagat’s first wife Tuki said, “We are like sisters. We help each other. Sometimes we might have problems, but we solve them among ourselves.”