Ten superstitions that I have grown up hearing

Here’s a list of superstitions that I have grown up hearing, thanks to my parents:

1. Do not cut your nails on your birth day (.i.e the day of the week that you were born on). Also, avoid Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for cutting nails.
2. Do not leave home on the day of the week that you were born.
3. Do not sleep/lie down at dusk, when the evening worship* is going on.
4. Do not eat anything while the evening worship is on-going.
5. For girls: Do not leave your hair open at dusk. Do not go out of the house with your hair open after dusk.
6. Don’t eat any fruits right after bathing. Take a few cubes of sugar and then eat that delicious mango you’re salivating for.
7. If someone sneezes right at the moment when you’re about to step out of the house, wait awhile and then go. Do not leave right away. It’s unlucky.
8. It is unlucky to travel if you see bananas before leaving.
9. It is unlucky to travel if you see brooms before leaving.
10. Do not touch the front wheel of your bicycle/bike with your feet. Apparently, the front wheel symbolizes God! (Or not, I have no clue.)

The aim of this post is not to bash the customs/beliefs that a large portion of community believes in. I do believe that most superstitions had their origins in something scientific/explainable. For example, one of the other superstitions that the older folk of my family observed was: “Come out of the house and blow conch-shells if you feel an earthquake.” Of course, it is clever to be outdoors during an earthquake. But the conch-shell part included in this ritual was probably to make everyone aware of the on-going earthquake, so that everyone in their houses came out to safety.

Sadly, the silt of the years have covered the logic behind most things and all we see now is blind following of certain rituals.

What about you? Are there any superstitions that you know of? Do let me know in the comments.

*Evening worship: In every Hindu family, the lady of the house (as I have seen in my family and most others) worships the deities installed in the house. The worshipped are mainly pictures/statuettes of the Hindu gods and goddesses. Incense sticks are burned and diyas are lit. Conch-shells are also blown, which is considered very auspicious.

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Interested in some stories about superstitions? Read, Women Beware…, a horror story on this blog or buy Bound by Life, my first ebook to read The Vaastu Snake, a interesting tale about delusion and a snake that guards the house. If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you may download Bound by Life for FREE!

Working on with “The Da Vinci Code”: Cymatics, An amalgamation of Art and Science

In my previous post, I talked about Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. In that I said that the book would act as a starting point for me in my quest of finding answers. But I never knew I will chance upon so many wonderful things through it!

One of the reasons why I loved The Da Vinci Code was becuase it explained the Greek alphabet Phi (which often denotes the golden ratio) so nicely. I am a student of Science and facts like these never fail to pique my interest.

After reading the book, I decided to watch the 2006 movie based on the book on Youtube. The version I found was dark and sped up and I did not like it so much. So I watched this video instead. It is not the movie, but rather how the movie was made.

And what a wealth of knowledge the video opened for me! Through it, I learnt that Da Vinci may have been dyslexic.

Following the book, the climactic scene of the movie was shot in Rosslyn Chapel. This video, however, does not exactly follow the last leg of Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveau’s quest of the Holy Grail as in the book and the movie, but it presents to us another wonderful secret that may have inspired the architecture of the Chapel: Cymatics. [The video is rather long at about 44 minutes, so if you want a quickie on Cymatics, check out the last ten minutes of the video]

Wikipedia defines Cymatics as “the study of visible sound co vibration.” As a student of science, I know sound propagates as waves and vibrations are the origins of sound. But I had no clue that the various tones and pitches of sound were actually capable of forming beautiful visible schematics on certain mediums, which may have inspired some of the engravings on the boxes of the Rosslyn Chapel!

Though towards the end of the Discovery video, Nick Boyes, the conservator of the Rosslyn Chapel argues that Cymatics was probably not the secret behind the engravings in the chapel architecture, but perhaps as Richard Castle would say, “Wouldn’t it be great if it was?”

I am usually not so enthusiastic about fantasy, but at one point in high school I was pretty convinced that there was indeed some universal law that would unite every field of study: science, art, philosophy, and even religion! Cymatics tickles that teenage fantasy.

At the same time, The Da Vinci Code makes me ponder on the authenticity of history. Was the world really as we know it to be? I know some would call Dan Brown’s book a bunch of conspiracy theories, but the man truly has opened up avenues for so many discussions in so many fields. And that, my dear friends, is his success!

If you’re still interested in Cymatics, you may check out this short video on TED.com:

Do you know of any other field of science that beautifully explains natural phenomena? Please share with me!

The Cottony Clouds in the Blue Sky

The August sky outside my window is a shade of royal blue. White, cottony blobs of clouds float in that vast blueness. In the countryside of West Bengal, soon kash flowers will start to bloom, announcing the arrival of Durga Puja, one of the most celebrated festivals among the Bengali.

Even though I spent the first few years of my life in Guptipara, a small rural town in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, the more conscious memories of my childhood are engraved in the soils and air of Durgapur, my present hometown. Durgapur being a city, you won’t probably see sprawling kash fields by the riverside. So, for me the arrival of Durga Puja in Durgapur was marked by the bright blue skies filled with blobs of white clouds. To this day, the sight makes my heart leap with joy, because it is associated with my childhood. It reconnects me to my past.

My fascination for the white, cottony clouds date back to when I was four or five. At the time we were still in Guptipara. We lived in a house which was home to a big, joint family. Our family had to itself two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom separate from the house, a well for drinking water and lots and lots of trees: wood-apple, litchi, mango, jackfruit, banana plantation and teak. There was big yard surrounding the house on three sides.

All our neighbours had the same surname. The ones on our left were especially close to us. My mother says the grandpa-like figure of that house loved me a lot and I spent a lot of time with him. One day, I walked up to their house, attracted by a blobby, white mass on the ground next to their verandah. There was no one watching me at the time. I knelt down beside the white mass – it resembled the clouds up in the sky that I loved to watch. The clouds have descended to the ground! Wow!

I checked to see if anyone was looking and sheepishly touched the whiteness. It felt wet. Suddenly, someone came and said, “That’s shaving foam, sweetheart. Go wash your hands, it is dirty!”

Eww! Gross!

As I write this, I feel numbly certain that this incident had happened but I can’t exactly be sure that it happened the way I am writing. Was there really no one around at first? I have a feeling that I was indeed alone. Did someone actually tell me that it was shaving foam, or did I realize it myself? Again, I am not sure. There are memories like this embedded in the cells of my brain of whose existence I am vaguely, at times seriously convinced of, but can’t bet on them.

Do I really remember things as they happened? Or is it some dream that I believe to be a memory? These anomalies bite at the back of the writer’s mind; she wants the truth. She wants to see through the sepia-tinted lens of time and find out what little Arpita loved to do, who she played with, what she played with.

At times, I am certain of the events that occurred, but cannot point them to any particular year. I have tried asking my mother, but her memory is weaker than mine with respect to such anecdotes. She is one happy little woman who is content with the present. I have never seen her speak to us about the past nostalgically. Even when I ask her about it, she is factual about what she remembers. I do not see any hint of the sentimentality in her that according to poets, are associated with memories.

My father wasn’t exactly there when I was growing up – when we were in Guptipara, he stayed in Durgapur, manning our medicine shop, visiting us once a month. Even after we came to Durgapur, I saw very little of him as he was at the shop the whole day.

The only persons who might have told me about the first few years of my life, my paternal grandparents, are dead. I lost both of them before I was ten. I will revisit their story in a subsequent chapter.

Sometimes I feel sad, not being able to construct the first few years of my life. Somehow for me, understanding the past holds the key to understanding myself in the present. I can’t accept that those years have simply slipped off my cognition, alive only through some feeble memories on whose authenticity I am not sure I can rely.

Perhaps that is why I look for the broken toys in the few old family pictures we have, because they bring back memories of something that had been, something more tangible than my fading memory.

Copyright © 2015 Arpita Pramanick. All rights reserved. 

Note: This essay is part of an upcoming anthology. To read my fiction pieces, please check out the Short Stories on this blog. You may also buy my Kindle ebook, Bound by Life on Amazon. It is available for only $0.99 until 19th August, 2015.

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HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

TO ALL MY FELLOW INDIANS!

JAI HIND! VANDE MATARAM!

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