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Nobody steals in Sialia

Bibhuti Mishra in Bhubaneswar

In this age of scams and forgeries there is a little village in Orissa where there is no fear of theft!

About 175 kilometres from Bhubaneswar is Sialia, so named because the village has an abundance of siali creepers. It is a small village complete with low-thatched houses, streets full of cow dung and dust, crowded with wide-eyed urchins and a few bullock-carts. But none of the houses have doors.

"Nobody steals here," said Prahlad Sahu, 48, a resident of the village. "It has been like this for a long time -- at least as long as I can remember. Even my grandfather had talked about this. So it had been like this during his lifetime too."

Nobody knows when the tradition of doorless houses began in this village. Manguli, who in his eighties is the oldest man in the village, said, "Perhaps it has been like this since the village came up."

It is strange that while the nearby villages are absolutely normal in their quota of larceny and other forms of crime, Sialia remains untainted.

"Our goddess guards the village," said Sahu.

At one end of the village is a small, rectangular place at the foot of a giant banyan tree for the presiding goddess of the village, known as 'Kharakhai Thakurani' (she who stays in the open). Nobody knows how old the shrine is.

According to a legend, King Kanika had a dream one night, wherein the goddess had asked him to arrange for her daily 'puja' without erecting a temple. Thereafter, prayers were offered to the goddess who ''guards the village staying in the open''.

In fact, as one takes a walk down the village main street, people relate stories of how those who attempted any crime in the village have been severely punished.

Prahlad recounted how an outsider came to steal in the village which he could not enter as he was paralysed in front of the goddess' shrine.

A peep into the houses reveals that there are no doors for the inner rooms. There are only shoulder-high mud walls that give the women of the house some privacy.

Living in a village where there is no crime, how do they feel when they venture out into the big, bad world? Aparti Pradhan who works in the Rourkela steel plant said, "I feel suffocated and whenever I find time I rush back to my village. I am able to breathe freely here."

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