Hyderabad: Following a 62-year-old custom, a tribal lady drank 2.5 kg of sesame oil for peace and prosperity at the annual Khamdev Jatara fair held at the Narnoor mandal headquarters in the Adilabad district.
The event is observed every year on the day of the full moon in Pushya, a holy month in the Hindu calendar.
According to News18, the paternal sister of the Thodasam clan, Mesram Nagubai, from Koddepur village in Jivithi taluk in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra, began the yearly event by consuming a significant amount of sesame oil. The temple committee members afterwards congratulated her.
The Thodasam clan honours Lord Kamdev as their personal God. The clan has a custom where one of the paternal sisters must consume a lot of handmade sesame oil over the course of three years at the yearly festival.
They believe that continuing the custom will provide farmers with healthy crops and offer joy and peace to the neighbourhood. They claim that the custom started way back in 1961. Since then, up to 20 paternal sisters of the line have successfully carried out the custom.
Mesram Nagubai will now carry out the custom by consuming sesame oil for the next two years.
In addition to a sizable number of followers from Telangana and Maharashtra, the event included Adilabad ZP chairman Rathod Janardhan and Asifabad MLA Atram Sakku.
Dr Rahul of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Adilabad, discussed the repercussions of such behaviours on the body. He added that while it depends on the body’s endurance, consuming too much oil or food will have a detrimental effect on one’s digestive system. He said that drinking a lot of oil at once can make one throw up and would also have long-term negative effects on one’s health.
