“This year, I have a good crop on 10 acres. This has been attracting unnecessary attention of villagers and passersby. To ward off their evil eye, I thought of this idea of putting up the big flax poster of Sunny Leone a couple of days ago.”
Chenchu Reddy is a cauliflower-and-cabbage farmer in the Banda Kindi Palle village in the state of Andhra Pradesh on India’s southeastern coast. In an interview with the Hindustan Times, he claims he’s had good crops for the past few years at the start of the growing season, but as people on the nearby road pass by and stare at his plants, their “evil eye” has killed them. Wait, what?
The “evil eye” curse dates back to ancient Greece and Rome. Writers from the so-called Classical antiquity period (Hesiod, Plato, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder and others) told of malevolent stares with varying degrees of evil power that could potentially be warded away with talismans and charms, often in the shape of eyes. Belief in the evil eye was thought to have been spread to the Near East by Alexander the Great and fear of it eventually made its way in various forms around the world.
Tools to ward off the evil eye
In Brazil, many evil-eye believers think casting a mal-olhado (“act of giving a bad look”) or olho gordo (“fat eye”) while envying a growing plant will kill it. This may be the curse Chenchu Reddy was thinking of as he saw his plants dying. Indians refer to the evil eye as “Drishti,” “Disti” or “Buri Nazar” and believe they can be warded off by charms, objects such as rock salt or chilis, evil-eye dolls (“dishti bomma”), tattoos or slogans. Newborn babies are protected from the evil eye by the application of black eyeliner.
But porn stars? There may be a method to the madness of Chenchu Reddy. He says he tried a field “dishti bomma” (kind of a scarecrow for people) but that didn’t work. Then he came up with idea of just deflecting the evil-eye stare rather than blocking it completely.
“I went to the computer centre and asked them to give me a photo which will deviate the attention of the people away from my crops… and they gave me this photo.”
It was a poster of Sunny Leone, a Canadian-born Indian-American actress, nude model (2003 Penthouse Pet of the Year) and former porn star (named one of Maxim’s top 12 porn stars in 2010). The photo is of Sunny in a bathing suit but her ‘melons’ still pull eyes – evil and just plain curious – away from his cabbages and cauliflowers.
To give his Sunny Leone posters additional power, Chenchu Reddy added phrases like “Orey Nannu Choosi Yedavaku Raa” (Hey, don’t cry or feel jealous of me) and “Atu Yekkada Choosthunav, Nannu Choodu” (Where are you looking at? Look at me), which are also painted on trucks to ward off evil eyes. Photos of the banners in the field can be seen here. He says the combination of slut and slogan seems successful.
“The trick has worked. Nobody is looking at my crop now.”
Chenchu Reddy doesn’t think he’s offending anyone with the porn star poster, but he’s ready in case anyone from the government comes calling to complain.
“The officials never bother to come to our fields to find out our problems. Why should they have any objection?”
Right on, Chenchu! Power to the people and the porn star!
Paul Seaburn (CLICK HERE TO READ AND SEE MORE)
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