Village shuns wells after a suicide

Since Sunday, the villagers have stopped drawing water from all the three wells in the village the primary source for water for bathing, washing utensils, sweeping and swabbing. “Several of us have not had a bath in the last three days,” says Balu Salunke, a Shiv Sena worker. Within hours of his suicide, Uttam’s family and all his neighbours locked themselves up in their houses andlater relocated to another area in the village. They fear Uttam’s ghost, but more than that, are haunted by the conviction that if they go near the well, the disease would afflict them as well.

Of course, there is a logic, they patiently explain: “His body was lying in the well for six hours and he was bleeding from the nose. Obviously, his blood and the germs would have mingled with the water and since all the three wells in the village are connected, the germs would have travelled to the other wells. Then if we use that water to bathe or wash our utensils, we will get AIDS too,” says Babban, one of Uttam’s neighbours.

“Such is the scare that no one was willing to fish out his body and it was only after a lot of persuasion and some coercion that Uttam’s brother was lowered into the well to get the body out,” says R M Thorat, the Police Station Officer of Parmer who adjudicates matters in Vasunde.

In this drought-prone village, rumours and theories are swirling with the hot summer wind. There is abelief that Uttam’s 19-year-old wife, Savita, also has been afflicted. Jayshree Udavant, the youthful sarpanch has been besieged by angry villagers that the wells should be dried out, cleaned and refilled. A section of the village is demanding that a doctor should come from Ahmednagar and test everyone’s blood. But, another section opposes this: “You never know just how many people might have AIDS.

What’s the point in finding out about it. We are better off as it is,” says Balu Salunke. The sarpanch says that she has been trying to battle such “ignorance”, but no, she has not been near the well herself. “What is the point in inviting unnecessary trouble,” she says. Though at the insistence of our photographer she agreed to pose in front of another well. “I have read about the causes and effects of AIDS and I must try and take the lead in dispelling such ignorance,” she says as she poses stiffly, only her chin quivering.

Her knowledge of AIDS (neither she nor anyone else in the village has heardof HIV positive) comes from Doordarshan. “We know it is a terrible disease, we know the symptoms and we know how it happens,” says the sarpanch’s husband.

How?“Oh! The usual reasons,” he mumbles, refusing to elaborate. Not one of the thirty-odd villagers gathered around mentions sex, but it is on everyone’s mind. “Uttam had gone to Pune for his education. It is a big town; we don’t know what he might have done there. Though,” concedes Balu Salunke, “he was a good man here.” “Yes, he was very devoted to his wife. They used to walk around arm in arm,” adds the sarpanch. Uttam’s wife, dry-eyed, her face pinched, says her husband never told her he had AIDS. “All I know is that he had fever for the last three months, that he was losing weight and he was worried about his health. He sought treatment from doctors in Ahmednagar, in Pune, in Sangramnagar. But he never said he had AIDS.”

Uttam’s suicide note is equally ambiguous: “I am tired of my life, so I am ending it,” he wrote tersely.

Thevillagers dismiss the suggestion that Uttam could be suffering from some other disease and that there might be an altogether different reason for his suicide. “He had a happy marriage, he had no loans, had a good job,”

argues Babban. “Uttam committed suicide because he was sushiksit (well educated). When he knew he had AIDS, he realised what a terrible disease it is and decided to end his life,” says Salunke. Uttam’s viscera has been preserved in the rural hospital at Parmer, but a detailed report is awaited.

The field malaria official came yesterday and took a sample of water from the well. It has been sent for testing to Ahmednagar. But the villagers are categorical about not using the well water till it is cleared first.

Instead, some of them, tired of fetching water from the next village 18 km away, have opted to use the Harijan well on the outskirts of the village which was a taboo till Sunday. “It’s safer,” says Babban. Maybe it needed the stigma of Uttam’s death to end untouchability ofanother kind.