Villages just 48km from Hyderabad revive a frog ritual not seen in a decade

Barely 48 kilometres from Hyderabad’s IT corridor, women in Nednur village of Rangareddy district’s Kandukur mandal carried decorated frogs through the streets this week, reviving a rain-invoking folk ritual known as ‘kappa aata’ that had faded from practice during a decade of reliable monsoons. The ritual returned as Telangana confronts a sharp seasonal rainfall deficit that has left large stretches of farmland unsown ahead of the kharif season.

As part of the ceremony, women tied a live frog to a small wooden stick, adorned it with turmeric and vermilion, and carried it in a procession from house to house, singing traditional rain-invoking folk songs. Villagers joined in along the way, offering prayers for timely showers, healthy crops and relief from the dry spell. The ritual rests on a long-held belief that frogs act as messengers to the rain gods; participants place the frogs on bamboo frames and sprinkle water on them to induce croaking before the community gathers rice and other essentials for a shared feast.

Maize, the principal crop in Nednur, remains largely unsown because agriculture in the village depends entirely on the monsoon. ‘We learnt these traditions from our grandmothers. There was no need to perform them over the past decade. Now, we are once again invoking the rain god,’ said Anjamma, one of the women who took part in the procession.

Farmers in the area describe a level of anxiety they have not felt in years. ‘We are witnessing a situation like this after a decade. We never had to pray to the rain god as he was kind to us. If rains do not arrive within the next week, it will be a huge loss for us,’ said Mutyal Reddy, a local farmer. Another villager said he has two acres of land he cannot cultivate because of the lack of rain, and called for government compensation for work already put into the fields.

The last time villages across Telangana turned to such rituals in similar numbers was 2016, during a run of severe rainfall deficits. In parts of Rangareddy district this year, the shortfall has crossed 60%, a gap meteorologists attribute to the absence of active low-pressure systems over the Bay of Bengal, leaving the state in a temporary rain-shadow zone even as neighbouring states receive substantial rainfall.

The revival is not confined to Nednur. Villagers in Jangaon, Jagtial and Karimnagar districts have also brought back kappa aata, while communities in Mulugu have turned to a separate ritual called Varadapasham, offering sweet rice on sacred rocks and eating it without using their hands as a gesture of humility. In Suryapet district, residents have taken part in Vanavasam, gathering in nearby forests for a communal prayer and meal in the hope of drawing rain before the sowing window closes.

Wikimedia Commons/by Vinay kumar malyam upadyaya