I just saw this video making rounds on social media recently and I’m totally lost for words.
The footage below, taken just this month in India, shows a crowd of about 100,000 people – both old and young – gathered at the Exhibition Ground in Hyderabad taking part in perhaps one of the strangest rituals I’ve seen in years. The asthma patients are being forced to swallow live fish as a cure for their health problem.
Photo credit: Ruptly
It’s truly unbelievable and very hard to watch.
What particularly made me cringe is that part where an angry father had to spank his poor child who refused to eat the fish and tried to run away.
Watch the weird video here:
Instead of using conventional medicine, these people have resorted to the bizarre ritual. I couldn’t help but wonder – have these guys never heard of asthma inhalers and nebulizers?
According to the information we’ve gathered from the DailyMail, the live fishes are stuffed with yellowish paste which is actually a “secret formula of herbs” administered by the Bathini Goud family. They say the formula has been passed to their generation since 1845 by a Hindu saint.
As if the act wasn’t gross enough, the way the procedure is done is also outrageous. The news site reported:
“Those administering the treatment often clamp their hands over their mouths and noses afterwards to force them to swallow, sometimes giving their neck a quick massage afterwards to help ease the discomfort.”
So far, the video uploaded by Ruptly has been viewed over 240,000 times on YouTube. It has, however, gained a huge number of 619 dislikes (as compared to only 233 likes) on the said video-sharing site. Browsing the comment section likewise shows people are totally grossed out by the odd practice.