Superstition

India is a very superstitious place. People will not take any major decision in their lives without consulting an astrologer or without ensuring the appropriate signs are there. There are auspicious and inauspicious times for weddings, births, ceremonies. You should not marry someone if your astral charts don't match up. People protect themselves from the evil eye daily by putting a dot on their forehead. If you're going out and someone sneezes once, you are either not to go out at all or wait 10 minutes to avert the bad thing that would have happened. If milk boils and overflows it is unlucky and you have to put some yogurt in it to counteract the effect; BUT if you've just moved to a new house you have to let the milk boil and overflow. If a lizard falls on you, it depends whether you're male or female and what side of your body it falls on if it is unlucky or lucky. Black cats are bad, white ones are good. A twitch in your eye can mean you'll see a close friend or that you'll have visitors. And these are but a few I've come across.

I think superstition is a way of trying to control or know the total unexpectedness and randomness of human existence. There is no way to know what is going to happen, or to direct it one way or the other. By doing things in a certain order or not doing things because some sign was contrary to its success we won't really influence the results. And if you think about it, deeper questions arise, as for example, if you believe that if you see sign x scenario A will happen and you do something to avert that so you end up in scenario B, who is to say you weren't destined to scenario B to begin with?

But no matter how irrational superstition might seem, I think we all have our little superstitious beliefs. I certainly do. I have my personal signs I consider lucky or unlucky. For example, if the time and the radio station I'm listening to match, i consider it lucky (let's say, listening to station 105.7 at 10:57). Or if I think of a song and suddenly they play it on the radio, that's lucky, or seeing all cars around me are the same color (I just realized all this have to do with being in a car. I guess I spent a lot of time driving in DF).

I wonder how all these signs came to be. And how we can think that something as random as a sneeze can actually signify something bad will happen. I guess we just try to hold on to anything we can in order to avoid reality: we have no control over anything, we have no way of knowing what lies ahead, and we have no way of knowing how any single event will fit into the larger picture of our lives. But once we start to accept this, it's such much easier to sit back and enjoy the ride (even if it's on a rickshaw!).