Imagine a world where praying at a temple could get you a male child. Such places of worship, marked exclusively for people who want a male child, are spread across Punjab. So popular are these temples that they get thousands of visitors a day, with just one prayer on their lips — that they be blessed with a son.

Thrity-six-year-old Sukhraj Singh works as a labourer in a dairy farm in Milan, Italy, but he is in Amritsar on a mission. Childless for the last seven years, he and his wife came down to the Bir Baba Budha Mandir in Amristar to pray for a son.

Bir Baba Budha Mandir is a pilgrimage spot for people who yearn for a male heir.

This gurdwara is almost like a pilgrimage spot for people like the Sukhraj Singh who yearn for sons. However, last year when his wife had a baby daughter both husband and wife were shattered. So this year they're back again — to ask for the son they never had.

"We prayed at this temple and then we had a daughter. So I have come back again to this temple, this time I want a male child," he says.

For years, people from India and abroad, have been flocking to temples and gurdwaras like this one, spread all across Punjab in the hope of a male child. Devotees — of all faiths — here are usually childless couples or young women who come to pray for a son in the future. Visitors here say that asking for a girl is not even an option.

These devotees are made to eat a single roti and an onion, which according to the priests in these places is a definite guarantor of a boy.

To eat a roti and an onion may sound unique but there are other places that have even stranger ways of making sure that a male heir is born.

Sixty kilometres away from Amritsar in Dhyanpur, at the Baba Lalji temple, a dip in a well on full moon nights followed by medication specially prepared by the head priest is the way to ensure that a boy is born.

And with a little help from the local doctor's ultrasound machine, the dream is realised.

Jagir Singh who lives in Amritsar, says, “My brother bathed at the well here twice and he has two sons. The doctor has told my wife that we are having a son this time.

This desperation for male children has given Punjab a dismal sex ratio — 874 girls per 1000 boys according to the 2001 census.

This is evident when one sees 19-year-old Rajwant Kaur visiting these temples to pray for a brother — she seems to know she's a burden on her family. “No one wants a girl anymore. Everyone wants just boys and that’s because often parents can’t pay the dowry so they pray that no girls are born into the family,” she says.

Even as these citadels of patriarchy welcome thousands of devotees every day it’s no surprise why young girls like Rajwant Kaur live with the humiliation of their own birth.