Hari Podha (80) of Salepali in Bargarh district who died on Saturday had none by his death bed even though he had married nine women. He went for polygamy in anticipation of attaining fatherhood which never happened.
All the wives left him for some reason or the other and a few of them died also. Finally, the octogenarian old man was living alone in a hut struggling to eke out a living.
Situation, however, was not the same in the beginning. He was a well- to- do person with 22 acres of land. If not a palace, but a habitable good house was also there of his own. When his intense desire to become a father was not fulfilled, he got financially ruined due to a series of marriages and having to manage a jumbo family.
Not only did he sell all his land, he also sold his house and became penniless. Situation came to such a pass that he lived in a plot of land provided free by the Government under landless scheme.
The last part of his life was further horrible. He was unable to beg on the streets of the villages due to illness and weak health.
But on Saturday, the villagers found his door closed for a long time. When they broke it open, they found Podha dead on a small cot. The news soon spread all across the village.
Again to his bad luck, none of the villagers came forward to take the body to the grave yard. Reason: He had married to women of different castes and hence, had lost his caste. Hence, the body lied on the cot for a pretty long time and drew the attention of the local administration.
lastly, at the instruction of the Collector of Bargarh and the Sub Collector of Padmapur, local Sarpanch Maheswar Sahu arranged for the last rites.
“The ugly casteism still prevails in villages of Odisha. We have done little to raise people above such prejudices. But when the matter of Hari Podha came to our knowledge, we did all that was required to perform his last rites with the help of the local people,” said Sarapanch Sahu.