One Who Hated Books

I grow up hearing and practicing a lot of superstitions. I have to say I believe in them. Reason is simple, it is engraved in our breath. We followed it religiously. Our parents and grandparents made sure we practiced them. Nowadays many years living outside country, I find these superstitions we believed back then lost its importance. I started to think why our generations from the past practiced them. There are many reasons as to why already out there. But I want to reason myself why this has started at least my interpretation. I could be wrong.

I have seen one of my neighbor who owns a shop always waited by his gate in the morning. He will not walk until unless he see a bike coming from his right side. He also makes sure it is not a milk bike. He believes that if bike passes by his right side when he walks towards his shop, that day he will get great sales. This happened every day until he passed away. This is actually a superstition. Even my grand parents practiced this. They will never walk out of their house if they see a milk selling bike coming. No one had good explanation as to why? I thought about it a lot. I have no convincing reason either. I have walked out when a milk bike came, nothing happened that day. I was just nervous a little, reason being, I was told many times it is not good. Readers, if you know any valid reason, please input your comments below.

If a crow sits on your front fence and cry, then people believed there will be visitors that day. I have seen people prepping extra food on that day as they are convinced there will be un announced visitors. To tell you the truth, I have myself experienced many times this comes true. Now living in a country there is hardly any fence, I really couldn’t try this out here. This one I do have some explanation. My reasoning to this is simple, Usually people says this during the month of wedding season. I have noticed this all the time, people do not say or anticipate visitors, when crow usually cries by sitting on their entrance fence, but they will comment only during wedding season. It is a common practice in India to invite all the relatives, if someone getting married. There are certain months good for getting married as well. People usually expect at least 3 to 4 weddings during that time. So crow crying and visitors coming does not really have any connection. But it did, during my childhood. Any other explanations please do comment and share.

Asking for a prostitute to come from the opposite direction of your path, if you are going for an important matter, such as a land deal or court case. I have seen this happening during my younger days as well. Not sure why they did. But it was a common belief that if they pass a prostitute everything will fall on their favor. This superstition, I have many problems with. Usually the very same people will not let prostitute to come and attend any functions in their house. They consider that as bad. But when they want to go somewhere, then the presence of them will become good. Does this make any sense. Till this day, I couldn’t come up with any reasoning. Readers, if you know why, please do comment and share your thoughts.

Dropping mustard seeds will bring in poverty to your home. I am not sure how many household have done that and nothing happened to them. I can understand, mustard seeds are very small and if this gets dropped. It is hard to collect them. If you do also, dust will be there as well. So my assumption is that, if in any case, mustard bottle fell down, It is almost impossible to get everything back and on top of that cleaning is difficult. So most of the household must have thrown them away. Most likely the older people decides to add some scare to it. And people became more cautious when they handled mustard seeds. At least this superstition of bringing poverty did it. Again this is my own assumption. I could be wrong.

If anyone bring food to your home in a container, then it is a must you return that container with some food in it. People say, if you give container back empty it is not good for family. Not sure why? We practiced this and saw my parents even doing this. Also some family even put a piece of chilly, when they returned the container, if they did not give food. This prevents bad eye falling on them. Again, this particular superstition, I find it hard to come up with any sort of reasoning.

Wake up in the morning to your right side, not on your left side. I still practice this. But I have never instilled this to my kids. I am not sure their days are bad, when they wake up in the morning and roll to their left side to get up. I got that habit because the society I was brought up had all these superstitions and they religiously follow them. I cannot think of a day, when I got up by rolling towards to my left side. You may wonder, why don’t I? No idea. Do I think, my day will be bad if i do? Yes, I do think that way!!! Well, it is hard for me to change.

Superstitions usually sticks with you because of the culture you are brought up in. Regardless how much you got educated and how much you tend to analyze how this all started. I will say, if you are born and you practiced during your childhood, that fear in you will stay. The day you did not practice and some thing bad happened to you, it is very easy to relate to the superstition.

I would love to hear from you readers, if you have a different take on this. Please do comment and share your thoughts. If you like my writing, please support my memoir DROPLETS.