Close to the Indo-Pak border in Rajashtan’s Barmer district is Derasar village. In this small village with a population of not more than 600 people, every man has two wives. The reason is not because the men are fond of marrying two women but is part of a strange ritual.
In Derasar, around 70 Muslim families live. Marrying more than once is pretty common an affair in Islam but in this village, it’s not because of that either.
The surprising reason behind this unusual state of affairs is that in this village, if you marry just one woman, you are simply not going to have a child with the first wife. Or so they believe.
But it’s been observed over the years that when men marry again, the family is blessed with a child, from the second wife.
A lot of people in the village have waited for almost half of their lives to have a child with their first wife. Villagers vouch for the fact that such men, when married again, had children.
One man even had three children after he married a second time.
Similarly, the women of the village have to trek more than 5kilometres every day to collect drinking water. A woman after getting pregnant cannot walk so much kilometers to fetch water.
So, her husband marries another girl so that she can run the household chores and go to bring water. This has been going on in the villages for ages together.
Agencies