Nov 3, 2010
One fine day, I was taking a shower - not that I don’t shower everyday, I do - the soap slipped out of my hand and fell down, then in a span of 4 seconds it fell again. I picked it up and then purposely put it down again. I don’t know why I did it, but the rest of my shower was spent thinking about why the hell I put it down myself to make it a count of three.
Many of us might have had these kinds of experiences where we do not really know what we are doing and why we are doing it but nevertheless we do it. These are superstitions. I would define superstition as an act of blindly following weird things just because we were told to do so. Do we really try to get to the root of the superstition and find out why and how it originated? Some people do and many don’t even bother about it.
Coming back to my SOAP OPERA, my friend and I were having a chat over coffee and I narrated the entire opera to him. He also had gone through many similar experiences and fortunately for me, he knew a tiny miny bit behind the 'three times.' He said there was a Hindi saying 'TEEN TIGADA, KAAM BIGADA.' But in my case I myself bigadofied the kaam I was doing by dropping the soap the third time!! There is a similar saying in Malayalam - 'trividham dushta lakshanam.' Oh my dear god, I was practicing a superstition wrong for the past 15 years!
This is when I realized that either my ancestors who passed me the 'three time' superstition were wrong or superstitions are customized according to the needs of the people in different parts of India and also the world.
There are many more superstitions which I follow. I am a little ashamed of revealing all this, but shame is something which I left behind many many years ago. Before any exam, my mom has to call me and say "BOREN KARN BORAY" (Write well). I have never failed an exam and I don’t know whether it is because of mummy’s words or my studies, but I never dared to skip this custom. This has become a routine, a kind of custom I can never even think of ignoring. I am sure my future generations will have a superstitious belief that moms should call their children before the exams and say "boren karn boray," without even knowing the reason - that their great great grandfather was a stupid scared person before exams. (Hope this article is not archived by daijiworld team). Oh the shame has come back - I wont reveal any of the other weird things I do. Let me expose some of my friends instead.
My friends also have superstitions and I am allowed to reveal theirs without mentioning names. One among them believes that no person should cross over him when he is sitting or lying on the floor. This is a very common superstition followed everywhere across India. He believes this will lower his life span. After much research on how many years are reduced due to a single cross-over, the number of times he has been crossed over and applying complex algorithms on the data, we finally found out that he should have been dead 25 years ago! I don’t get how crossing-over is related to life anyways.
One more interesting story is that people don’t seek for blessings when the older people are lying down or napping on the floor. It seems seeking blessings from a person who is in such a posture would be like seeking blessings from a dead person.
There are many more standardized superstitions we follow. A black cat crossing the path is considered to be a bad omen. It is widely believed that if one cuts nails at night, one will lose money. I never used to cut nails at nightuntil recently when I finally realized I don’t have enough money to lose. Who cares?
Another interesting superstition is that when a crow shouts (I don’t know what we call for a crow’s shout, so I directly translated it from Konkani), it is affirmative that there will be guests at home. How can a crow, which doesn’t even know where its next morsel is going to come from act as a guest forecast? Unbelievably true. I cannot forget my uncle who used to turn up every time my mom made moong curry for lunch. Maybe the same crows told my uncle that mummy is making moong curry.
I can go on and on doing analysis and synthesis of the astronomical number of superstitions we follow, but I am pretty sure that average concentration levels of bright and intelligent people reading this is no more than 1000 words. Well, there are lots of superstitions being followed in India, and many of them are baseless. Somehow they have got embedded into our culture and become a part of our life.
People believe superstitions hinder India’s progress, and it got me wondering how. I think our way of thinking is obscured because of some superstitions, especially in rural areas and these have to be clarified and only then can we think clearly. India has made a lot of progress in terms of urban development, markets, finances and exports. Isn’t it time we set our minds free in some aspects and make way for rural development?
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