Bachelors in Sayla

Sayla (Gujarat), March 23: The magnificent sandstone arch at its entrance cannot hide Sayla’s misery. The Kathiawad village’s men just cannot get married.

You see them loitering everywhere — single, despondent men aged 25 to 50 — as soon as you enter the village, 35km southwest of Surendranagar town.

Of Sayla’s 15 falias (neighbourhoods), Patel Falia alone is home to at least 75 bachelors.

“They are not celibate by choice but by compulsion. None of the other 75 villages in this taluka will marry their daughters to anyone from Sayla,” said Rayabhai Rathod, former panchayat chief.

The reason is water scarcity in a village separated from the nearest habitation by at least 3km. Sayla gets water once a week, for less than an hour, through a pipeline from the small Limidi Bhogao dam 11km away that has almost run dry. The local borewell water, unlike that in the surrounding villages, is unfit for use.

Nanjibhai Patel, 35, is desperate for a bride but knows his chances are almost over. “I have reconciled myself to spending my life alone,” he said.

“Over the past 15 years, most of the better-off families have moved to nearby towns. The population of this village – dominated by Patels, Jains and Brahmins -- has fallen from 16,000 to 14,000,” said Harijibhai Patel.

One other reason for the dwindling numbers is that few children are being born.

Brothers Hemjibhai, 50, and Manubhai, 45, both unmarried men who own small shops, have made the best of a bad situation. They claim they are sanyasis and have grown beards.

Not everyone has shown the same resilience. A 30-year-old, also named Nanjibhai, hanged himself five years ago, unable to bear the serial rejections from girls’ families.

Sarpanch Kanjulal Kachia said the problem became acute after the water scarcity worsened in the past 15 years. “Also, families (in the surrounding villages) have become more aware nowadays and don’t want their daughters to face hardship.”

Even Sayla’s own women are married off elsewhere. The girls marry within the village only if the groom has a sister who can be given in marriage to the bride’s brother. Sayla has seen several such deals in the past five years.

Gujarat’s lifeline, the Sardar Sarovar Dam, has made no difference: the neighbourhood’s altitude prevents the canal’s water from reaching it.

Seven years ago, the administration built a Rs 60-lakh pipeline from a borewell pump 25km away, but it lies defunct because of faulty design.

So Kirit Shah, a well-off petrol station owner, could find a bride only after he left and settled in Surendranagar at age 35. Dilip Shah, a cooperative bank employee, had found a bride somehow but when he turned down her repeated appeals to move to a town, she left him.

Most of the villagers are too poor and uneducated to make a living elsewhere. They barely feed themselves by growing cotton, maize and groundnut on the black soil -- if there’s good rainfall.

Some of the men work in the stone quarries 8km away. There are no industries.

The local MLA, Popatlal Jinzaria of the Congress, said: “Being an Opposition member, I can’t do anything except raise the issue in the Assembly.”

He, however, claimed the state government was planning to pipe Narmada water to Sayla but added that it would take at least two years.

If and when that happens, Nanjibhai hopes, the three-year-old arch built by the Lalji Maharaj temple might be able to welcome brides to the village.