A farmer in India’s Andhra Pradesh is using a poster of Sunny Leone to “ward off the evil eye” from fellow villagers.
According to Hindustan Times, the poster featuring Sunny Leone striking a sultry pose in a red bikini, has been put up by 45-year-old Chenchu Reddy against the green backdrop of his vegetable fields so that it “attracts all attention” and keeps his bumper crop of cauliflower and cabbage safe from the evil eye of other farmers.
The farmer of Banda Kindi Palle village, who by the way is not a particular fan of the Indian-American pornstar-turned-Bollywood-actor, while speaking to the media said that his healthy crop stretched on 10 acres had been attracting the unwanted attention of 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,” he said.
The poster also has a line written in Telugu that translates, “Hey, don’t cry or feel jealous of me!”
“The strategy apparently is working as everyone diverted because of the poster doesn’t look at my crop now,” Reddy said.
It’s quite common in the countryside for superstition-steeped farmers to use straw-filled scarecrows with an upside down clay pitcher to resemble a human head for scaring birds away from fields or put ugly, fearsome dolls — called “bommalu” in Telugu — to block the evil eye.
In rural Andhra Pradesh, demons drawn on a metal plate or a pumpkin are set up as “dishti bomma” or evil eye doll in front of homes and near farms. But a poster of a popular actor in a skimpy bikini is a first, perhaps.
The farmer doesn’t think he has breached any indecency law, and nor does he give a hang to agriculture officials or police finding the visual objectionable. “The officials never bother to come to our fields to find out our problems. Why should they have any objection?” he asked.
