Boden: Even as our country has made rapid progress on various socio-economic indices, people of Chinda Bhunjia community in Patal Ganga Kotagaon village under this block in Nuapada district, inside Sunabeda sanctuary, choose to sleep on bar floor to propitiate their deity.
The community members follow a different tradition and always sleep on the floor instead of cots and beds. They fear that sleeping on beds or cots will invite the wrath of their ‘Maa Dwarasuni’ (local deity).
If someone mistakenly sleeps on cots, then the deity appears in their dreams and warns them of harsh punishment. They believe encountering the deity in dreams results in harm for the whole family and even for the whole village.
This is the reason for which no family members of Chinda sleeps on cots or beds and all of them sleep with their family members on floor. Chinda family members worship Maa Dwarasuni in the village temple as their presiding deity. One of the senior family members among the Chinda community is appointed as the priest who performs all the rituals.
All the family members even the children swear by the name of the deity and affirm their faith in her as well as their age-old traditions. Time has not shaken their faith in the deity or their tradition as they still swear by the deity who they think will protect them from all evils and destruction.
Sources said the village has over 50 houses belonging to this community. That apart, the villagers also worship a host of deities like Kharatali, Babu, Guru Budha, Budimaa and Paradesan in their village. They not only abide by their tradition of sleeping on the floor but also follow it wherever they go.
Two members of a Chinda family died of snakebite while sleeping on the floor a few years back. Police rushed to the spot and was stunned when the family members narrated the reason for sleeping on the floor. Since then some of the families have started making their children sleep on a plank instead of the floor, said village priest Ghanashyam Chinda said. PNN
