Nothing baffles me more than grown ups following superstitious practices without questioning.
We’ve all grown up with the idea of a black cat crossing our paths as a bad omen, or not cutting your hair or nails on particular days of the week, to treating our sickness with an okhli mussal and mirchi, and going, “Ados ke, pados ke, Ghar ke baahar ke, jiski nazar uske deede pe challll jaaa”. Your own house version of utarofying nazar, or the number of steps one needs to go back, before one is out of danger of that “Evil cat” might vary, but I hope you get the picture of how superstitiously we’ve all been brought up.
There’s an often used term that all Dakkhani households use. Darindaraagi. Loosely translated as “lack of prosperity”. All the elders of the house regularly use it as part of their Takia-kalaam to add reason to their superstitions.
And since, we’re also asked, “Not to question the elders”, in a lot of ways, we end up imbibing those practices.
Today, while having dinner, my sister asked me to not to use my jhoota hand to take out the bhindi from the bowl. Her reasoning, “The food will get spoilt”. On being asked how, “this has been experimented” Where? “At home”. So, just to prove my point, I took half of it on my plate, from my jhootha hand, and kept the rest in the fridge. Now, this is an experiment and we’ll see the results tomorrow.
Meanwhile, my nails are getting bigger, but I’m waiting for Thursday to cut it off. #BreakingSuperstitions