- With yellow turmeric powder smeared across her face and hands, 25-year-old Narasimhaamma sings a slow dirge as her husband's body is placed on the funeral pyre. Her two-year-old daughter clings to her dishevelled sari while her four-year-old son looks dazed as someone shoves a burning torch into his hands.
- Venkateshan in Gattupal village was a weaver of pochampalli saris. With no money for food, leave alone silk thread, his loom had been lying idle for months. So, even though he was recovering from fever, Venkateshan went to work in the fields for Rs 30 a day. But the blazing heat took its toll on him and the 30-year-old weaver suffered a sunstroke. Too impoverished to be taken to hospital, he died the next morning. His widow did not even have the money for his cremation. So, the entire village pooled in and bought Rs 700 worth of firewood and a few old tyres for Venkateshan's last rites.
Merciless Celsius
Poverty, drought and now the heat plunge Andhra in a macabre dance of death <a >Updates</a>
- A majority of those killed have been daily wage-earners,
- Dalits and backward castes are the worst hit,
- Eighty per cent of the victims are from families that fall below the poverty line,
- Intense malnutrition has been the cause of many deaths.
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