Ganesh Sharma is an eligible bachelor desperately seeking a bride. For the past two years, he has looked high and low in the dry hills surrounding Goandi village. And with each worsening year of drought, his chances of finding one seem to be getting slimmer. On Akkha Teej earlier this month, Sharma helped organise four weddings in his village. Then he stood in the shadows and watched four girls from his village tie the knot. ‘‘It’s embarrassing to talk about it but then facts are facts,’’ the 26-year-old says, shrugging his shoulders. ‘‘I am just unlucky and it’s all because of the drought. My fields are dry, I don’t have much of an income and now we are on the verge of cutting our agricultural power connection. Which father would want to marry his daughter to me?’’ Laying a consoling hand on Sharma’s shoulder, Goandi sarpanch Ram Avtar Verma says: ‘‘Water shortage has become a big disadvantage in homes where boys are looking for a wedding match. While people don’t have enough money to organise proper weddings, water has compounded the problem.’’ Verma, himself a bachelor, complains that almost 40 per cent of the men in his village are bachelors who are finding it difficult to find a bride. ‘‘All our 300 wells are dry and all the neighbouring villages know that,’’ explains former sarpanch Durga Prasad. ‘‘And because people know that, they think twice before marrying their daughters into our village.’’ Bansi Ram is one such worried father from Guman Singh Ki Dhani village, looking for a groom for his 18-year-old daughter. ‘‘I can’t find anyone,’’ the 62-year-old farmer says, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘‘And only because I am insisting that the boy has a job and there is water where he lives.’’ His wife, Gulabi Devi, adds: ‘‘I know what it means for a woman to walk for miles to get water. I don’t want my daughter to spend all her life filling water. We are farmers and know there is a problem but how can we get our daughter married in a house which has taken the desperate measure of cutting power supply to their wells.’’ Bansi Ram’s family uses up to 15 pots of water a day. His wife, daughter Manju and granddaughters spend every waking moment queuing up to fill water. Kishan Lal Mathur is also on the lookout. ‘‘Ideally we would look for a match in nearby villages. But this time, we are not even considering that as an option for our daughter. I am very clear. The boy has to have a government job and there has to be some source of regular water in his house,’’ Mathur says. And he is resigned to the fact that his eligible son may cross the marriageable age of 25 years if the rains don’t come and fill his well quickly. The Gujjar community in Pandali village is also in despair. This Akkha Teej, when hundreds of marriages took place across the state, there weren’t too many here. And with a growing number of above 15-year-old boys, they are also praying forthe rains. In the cluttered electricity distribution office, executive engineer R.P. Sukhwal confirms that in the past one year about 60 villagers have filed applications to disconnect the power connections used to pump water out of their now dry wells. ‘‘Since the wells are dry, they disconnect,’’Sukhwal says. ‘‘We lose out on the fixed service charge but then the situation is very desperate.’’ Across the entire belt in Sikar district, every family says the same thing: ‘‘The wells are dry, the handpumps are drying up and the without water life as they knew it is coming to a standstill.’’ And while villagers brace themselves for the worsening summer ahead, Sharma keeps his fingers crossed that before the wedding season ends this June, ‘‘the drought in his life’’ may also end.
