On Superstitions

I had headed to the temple today evening with a few friends, only to find that it was closed due to lunar eclipse. We had washed away our disappointment in the Dosas we hogged at Dakshin, followed by watching the controversial yet bold ‘Nishabd’ of Big B. Meanwhile, I remembered the time I was confronted with a closed temple door; that time I was with family and I was made to believe that it was the most inauspicious thing to happen. The solution for which turned out to be the ever enervate wait until the doors opened in the evening after 5 hours!

This was not my first encounter of unexplainable and unquestionable faith within family that I found hard to digest and at many times I have vehemently opposed. It was taboo to touch even water during solar or lunar eclipse and predictably that’s when I would feel like guzzling anything I can lay my hands on. From Tuesday being ominous for hair-cutting; nails must not be cut after 6 pm; chuckling of lizards spelt bad luck , following 'rahukalam' for good times to begin work superstitions were a part and parcel of everyday life for my family! It reminds me of the Malayalam movie where in the actor dilip had lived the role of a family man who lets superstition take over his life, to the extent he jots the date of his death based on omens and signs only to find that he is hail and alive at the end of it.

I may sound like a hypocrite if I say that sometime in our lives we are all superstitious, which may not necessarily be religious. As a high-school student I used to ensure that I always write exams with this silver ink pen, which I termed “My lucky pen”. Later this had turned into a “lucky bag”. My best friend Divya used to have a “lucky frog”, well a stuffed doll really, called smoochy, which later turned out to be not so lucky. I also knew someone in college who would wear her earings inside out during exams. Even my dad had kept his twenty year old tattered wallet until it was detrimental to throw it.

Retaining possessions in the name of sentiments can term you as a sensitive person, but doing it to parlay ones confidence makes you unassuming. Above all letting external factors guide your life can even make u an incorrigible chicken-heart. Nevertheless to say, I don’t account anything “lucky” anymore and have somehow come to believe that ‘luck simply follows hard work’ and ‘each person is responsible to make his/her own luck’ … End of the day I am glad I am alive, contented, hail and healthy and at this moment awake to write this bantam blog…