OF ILL OMENS AND SUPERSTITIONS
Decades back ,when I first went to join the
bank where I had secured a job, the first question the branch Manager asked me
was “Madam are you superstitious ,you have chosen a very good day and time to
join duty ?” .Before I could blurt out that
it had nothing to do with beliefs and that I had to join on the day
to meet the deadline, my father who was with me, mumbled something like
yes yes ,we were etc. I was taken aback, as my father ,who was an Army officer,
just did not care for such beliefs and superstitions . Later on my father told
me that he did not want the Manager, who appeared to be a very God fearing
religious type, to get the impression that I was a total rebel when it comes to
such matters !! First impressions count , you know !
Over the years
working in the bank , I kept encountering such situations quite often
.There were customers who would request the disbursal date and time of their sanctioned
loans to be changed just
because they felt that the day was not auspicious or the time allotted
to them for availing the loan was “Rahu
kaalam”. Well, no one has so far undertaken a statistical study of the
“ timings “ of the disbursal of
loans that go bad in a bank, so
we have no idea whether the time chosen
by the customers for their loans from banks was really auspicious or not .Or
may be it was auspicious for the borrowers who had no intention of paying back !
I remember a colleague who kept observing the Navratna ring that I
was wearing and remarked,” Madam I trust you are wearing this for good fortune but it appears that whoever
advised you to wear it has not told you that the diamond on it should face this
side not on the side you are wearing “. He was aghast when I told him that
being fond of rings, I wore rings to
match my dress and the Navratna was chosen as a short cut as it had all the
colours , when I wore a dress for which
I had no ring with a stone of matching colour , or had no time to rummage through my collection!
Once my mother,
a friend and myself were to go on a
pilgrimage tour .The moment our car left the gate of our house a jet black cat chose to cross our path. Our friend
kept cribbing from that
moment that the journey was going to be a fiasco .But God
willed that everything went off so smoothly
with good darshans at all temples
that the cat was soon forgotten by our friend. The Gods perhaps decided to take away all the impediments of
the journey by sending the cat at the right time so that the obstacles remained
only in the mind.
I have always been amused by many practices followed by people,
like watching out for the first person who comes from the opposite side when you are embarking
on a special mission, tying lemons and
chillies at the entrance of houses to ward off evils, citing the timely ring of bells or the clicking
sound made by the house lizard as a
reinforcement of the veracity of something stated etc
Recently my niece
,who is more a daughter than a niece
gave birth to a baby girl and the baby who was perfectly healthy and
cheerful during the day, started crying
non stop at night after a few days of her birth. The doctors did not find any
special reason for the wail at night . My niece and her husband , who hails
from Delhi, discussed between themselves and decided that may be the unintentional ‘nazar lagna” (casting of eyes) by
visitors, could be the reason for the incessant crying. So they did something
to ward off the evil eyes by lighting a
wick and waving it around the child and then putting off the flame by keeping
it on a tap and sprinkling water on it and watching the flame flicker and sputter out. And lo the
baby stopped its howl from that night. This was repeated whenever there
were visitors to have a peek at the baby and surprisingly it worked !
So now I have an explanation as to why I have
started wearing my Navratna ring with the diamond stone facing the way it ought to , why I check out what kind of people
come from the opposite side when I leave
the house . I now watch out for the black cat in the neighbourhood lest
he cross my path and I also prick up my
ears for the clicking sound of the house lizard whenever I feel like having an
endorsement to my views ! Why invite misfortune when you can ward it off?? Ha Ha Ha.......!!!!
