Posted on 08/16/2002 9:13:41 AM PDT by Temple Owl
Naked female farmers bring rain
16Aug02
SOME 200 women in Nepal who ploughed their fields naked in a desperate attempt to bring rain to their drought-stricken region were rewarded as the monsoon began shortly afterwards.
The women had last week locked their husbands inside their houses and then stripped off to till their fields at midnight in a bid to appease the Hindu god of rain, Indra.
The superstitious women were trying to bring showers to the far western Banke district, where the monsoon had failed to materialise and farmers had been unable to plant rice.
Naked farming was not the only ritual performed by the locals, they also "married" male and female frogs and staged naked dances – all thought to provoke divine intervention to end dry spells.
Days after the naked ploughing, it began raining in western parts of the country and it seemed the rain god Indra was finally appeased, the Nepali-language daily, Nepal Samacharpatra said.
Local official Rajesh Kumar Mahato from the neighbouring Dhangadhi district told the newspaper that some places in the region had 197 millimetres of rainfall at the weekend.
The ritual had worked so well that excessive rainfall caused roads to become flooded.
Meteorology Department officials forecast the rain would continue for a few more days, the newspaper said.
Some 422 people have died in Nepal from flooding and landslides during this monsoon season, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
This report appears on news.com.au.
WFTR
Bill
WFTR
Bill
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