Beed family's chariot welcome for first girl in 200 years wins hearts online
A short video from Parli in Maharashtra's Beed district has travelled far beyond the town this week: a newborn girl and her mother riding home from hospital in a decorated chariot, drummers and cymbal players leading the way, fireworks going off and jalebis being handed out. The Dahiphale family says Gargi is the first daughter born to them in close to 200 years, and they decided her homecoming should look like it.
What happened
According to The Free Press Journal and Deccan Herald, Kalpana and Rishikesh Dahiphale's daughter was born on a Thursday in early September. Her grandfather, Limbaji Dahiphale, is headmaster of Bhagwan Primary School in Parli. When mother and baby were discharged on the Saturday, the family arranged a chariot procession through the streets to their home in Indiranagar, with drumbeats, fireworks, floral decorations and lighting at the house, and an aarti at the door. Relatives, friends and neighbours joined in.
The family's claim that this is the first girl in roughly two centuries rests on their own account of four generations without a daughter; it is not something outsiders can independently verify, and the reports present it as the family's claim.
What the family said
"It is a great fortune to have a daughter in the family. For so many years, we had the regret of not having a daughter," the grandfather told Telangana Today. The father said daughters are usually closer to their fathers and that "we will raise her like a flower". Grandmother Surekha Dahiphale reportedly decided at the hospital itself that the child would be welcomed with grandeur; the family has taken to calling the baby Lakshmi Devi.
Why it struck a chord
Beed, and the wider Marathwada region, has for years appeared in reporting about skewed sex ratios and the pressure on families to have sons. A family in the same district treating a daughter's arrival as an occasion for a public procession inverts that script, which is why the clip spread so quickly on Instagram and X and was picked up by regional and national outlets.
Reactions online were overwhelmingly warm, with many users calling it the kind of "viral" they wanted to see more of. Several drew a comparison with Piplantri in Rajasthan, where villagers plant 111 saplings for every girl born, a link Telangana Today also made.
A note of caution
Some commenters pointed out, fairly, that a celebration does not by itself change the structural reasons families prefer sons, from dowry expectations to inheritance customs, and that headlines about "first girl in 200 years" can unintentionally frame daughters as rarities. The Dahiphales' point, though, was simpler: that a daughter should be greeted with the same noise and pride a son would get. For a week at least, a small street in Parli made that argument better than any campaign poster.