IANS
Kendrapada, Orissa, Mar 16: Residents of an Orissa village have 'married' off a banyan tree to a peepal tree in a unique way to spread awareness about greater green cover.
The event took place Wednesday in Patachela village, some 80 km from Bhubaneswar, in the coastal district of Kendrapada.
In the past, childless couples in the region had arranged banyan-peepal marriages in the hope of getting a child, a villager said.
But this one was to create awareness among the people to conserve trees.
"Our village was covered with hundreds of trees when I was a child. But now the forest cover has dwindled. To spread the importance of trees we organised this wedding," villager Narahari Samal told media.
A similar ceremony took place last year in the nearby village of Olaver.