HYDERABAD: Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav administered the first dose of fish prasadam to a boy, marking the inauguration of the 190-year-old tradition of the Bathini Goud family of distributing fish prasadam to bronchial patients. At about, 59,000 people had received the prasadam.
The expectation was that about 70,000 doses would be administered by the end of the day. The prasadam will be distributed till Saturday evening, stuffed in the mouth of a murrel fingerling which the recipient has to swallow whole. The government had constructed shelters for the people, created queue lines and provided barricading. Food and water were distributed free.
Despite all this, the intense summer heat made standing in the queue a tough experience. Swamy, a resident of Karimnagar, “I was in the queue from 6 am, and I got my chance in the evening. I it was a tough task, as most of us are patents.” This was the second time he had come for the prasadam, which was delayed by the threeyear hiatus caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mahender Singh from Daulpur Rajasthan, an elderly man, along with five others had arrived in the city on June 6. He did not join the queue even though dusk was falling, preferring to stand on the sidelines. “We will join the queue once the rush reduces. We cannot stand for hours.” Prakesh, a student of the government veterinary college, said he and his colleagues were working as volunteers, helping the Bathini Goud family in administrating the prasadam by pushing the live fish down the throat of the recipients.
