Superstition in India is widespread. Be it villages or cities, there is no dearth of people believing the age-old unscientific beliefs that they have been followed since ages. Surprisingly, many people from even the new generation are not willing to let go of these beliefs that many a time makes people pay extremely for following them. This is exactly what happened recently in Bulandshahr area of Uttar Pradesh, lying approximately 70km away from the national capital.
A 35-year old woman named Devendri was bitten by a snake when she went to a forest area close to her home in order to collect woods for cooking. Even after the bite, Devendri was doing fairly well as she walked down to her house on her own. Upon reaching her house, she told her husband that she was bitten by a snake. But things took an unpleasant turn when instead of taking her to a doctor, her husband called a snake charmer for her treatment out of superstition.
Snake. Representational image. Source
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Upon arriving, snake charmer, who claimed to have treated many snakebites, started his weird treatment. He instructed Devendri’s family to cover her completely with animal dung. The superstitious family followed all his instructions.
Snake charmer. Representational image. Source
The snake charmer then started chanting strange mantras and pretended to do some sort of black magic. After some time, when the family members asked the snake charmer about the woman’s condition, he instructed them to take her out of the buffalo dung, only to discover that she had been choked to death. Yes! The woman had succumbed to death, perhaps because of the suffocation she had to deal with while being completely covered with dung.
This incident depicts how superstitious some parts of the Indian society are even in the 21st century; when the country boasts of having become modern, technologically, socially and in all other spheres of life. It also highlights that following superstition or superstitious beliefs blindly can even take a toll on a person’s life!
