My name is Rohini. I am from the village of Baravakumbooka. One of my sisters passed away. It was considered a village custom to serve alcohol at houses. Therefore, at any funeral house, it was customary to serve alcohol, beedi, cigarettes and betel. Adults both young and old consumed these drugs and alcohol as there was a myth saying that alcohol and cigarettes were essential to break rest at funerals. It was also strongly customary to serve alcohol at the graveyard for people who dig graves.

The drug prevention programmes held at our Association for Women Development is conducted by ADIC. Once I completed this training program, I realized that ideologies such as alcohol enabling you to stay awake at night and work hard are completely false. It was around this time when my sister passed away. I felt that I should initiate a change at this funeral. I finally decided to undertake this challenge and did not serve alcohol to anyone who stayed overnight and stayed awake. Some people inquired as to why alcohol was not served. I told them that I did not want to kill people who came to our place on behalf of our sister’s funeral. On the final day of the funeral, the people who were preparing the grave refused to finish their job as we refused to serve alcohol. We took some biscuits and tea instead. They refused to accept this and kept on demanding alcohol and discontinued their job. Thereafter, we asked them to leave and got my children and other siblings to come to the graveyard along with the necessary equipment. We all got together and dug the grave ourselves. I feel that my actions set a great example to the whole village.