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On treetop for last five years!

Correspondent

Jaya Nayak lost mental balance following an unsavoury incident

Shelter made on the top of the tree.

KORAPUT: Jaya Nayak has been living on treetops for the last five years! He must be attempting to achieve a rare feat to enter some world record books, you may say. It is not so. What then is the reason?

A peek into his life reveals an incident that has traumatised him to such an extent that he turned insane, leading to his strange behaviour.

Shocking twist

Jaya and Daimati was a happy couple in Chindiri village near Koraput till 2002. One day, there was a conflict over sharing of spring waters for agricultural use between two groups in the village. Basing on a complaint filed by the opposite party, the police put the couple and some others in the district jail.

Says 40-year-old Daimati: “Jaya never fought with anyone in the village. He maintained good relations with everyone. Being a person with high self-respect, he could not bear the shock of being sent to jail. On the first day of his jail term, he cried for hours. He started behaving abnormally from the second day.”

After being released from jail, Daimati left no stone unturned to get her husband cured. She had taken him to traditional healers at Laxmipur, Nandapur and Jeypore. He was even taken to the district headquarters hospital.

“But even after spending huge amounts of money mobilised by selling lands and properties, Jaya could not be cured. Instead, his condition worsened as he started beating even Daimati,” recalls her 70-year-old father Khagapati Mali.

Suddenly, one day he started fearing people of the village and preferred to stay on top of a tree in the nearby mountain. After staying for more than one year there, he shifted to a mango tree.

“For the last one year, he has been staying on top of a huge Simili tree. He has made an igloo-like shelter with polythene, bamboo and other items on the tree at a height of some 100 ft.

Though he gets down from the tree almost every day at sunset, there have been instances when he stays on the tree top for more than five days at a stretch,” says Daimati.

Living in hope

“Though he accepts food cooked at house, he never obliged my request to feed him with my own hands,” she says. Gradually, Jaya even stopped talking.

“He used to love me a lot,” reminisces Daimati and looks forward to the day when he would rejoin her at their house.

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