Indus Valley Times

Nivedita Pattanayak
A willowy woman helped us meander through the dusty bylanes of the village. She kept saying ‘’No matter how much we try convincing them, they are unrelenting. We are tired of arguing now, at least we are relieved that this little girl has been saved’’.
As many as 101 families inhabit the Nanirguda village of Bissam-Cuttack block and all of them belong to the Scheduled Tribe category. Banaja is a twenty-year old bride belonging to one of these families. Her family consists of her spouse, her mother –in-law, brother- in-law and a baby girl who is one and half-year old.

We learnt that the lady who guided us to Banaja’s house was actually the local Anganwadi helper. She said candidly ’’She would have died Madam…had it been not for me, the local Anganwadi Didi and the gentlemen out here (referring to CINI activists) who rushed her to the nearby hospital defying the strong resistance from her family members’’.
Upon engaging with Banaja, we got to know that she had some breast issues.

‘’After three-four days of my daughter’s birth, she could not breastfeed from the reservoir, after multiple attempts; she could succeed feeding milk to her child only from the left breast but not the left one. Gradually, her left breast grew like a lump and it was very painful. No one from her family bothered her to take her to the hospital as everyone in the village believes that if the baby’s palate hits the breast, then it will be cured by circumcision. So, the old women of the village came and applied some paste prepared out of locally grown herbs and also fed her with some.
Partially, if not completely, our collective efforts to eradicate superstition from the society would definitely bore fruit. Although the elderly women folk still resist accepting this, the teenage girls and young pregnant mothers are becoming the agents of change and driving reforms in the community. In the words of Banaja’ ‘’I strongly believe that one day the village will be completely freed from such superstitions’’.