A man will wax forth eloquently about his ‘scientific temper’ and his cool, rational approach to problems. “Look at Japan,” he will declaim dramatically, “Look at Germany. What is the progress they have achieved and where are we? I tell you, superstitions are holding back India’s progress.” The same man will make sure, when no one is looking that he is not setting out to the market to buy vegetables during ‘Rahu Kalam’.
A friend of mine, a post – graduate in science, is so superstitious about Tuesdays and Fridays that he won’t shave on those days even if he looks like the Bluebeard of Paris. Not only is he convinced that the prickly stubble on his chin will flatly refuse to come off even if he uses a brand new razor if he rashly essays to shave on those two fateful days, but also that he is likely to nick his carotid artery in the bargain.
But many superstitions, if analyzed dispassionately do seem to make sense. For instance, it can be argued (and argued plausible) that a butter – fingered workman atop a ladder will drop his load on you cracking your skull as you walk under his ladder or that a broken mirror might cause lacerations or bleeding wounds or that the thirteenth child in a family meant to hold two is unlucky.
Gem stones are popularly supposed to attract the magnetic forces of good fortune from the heavens yonder and ensure prosperity not only for oneself, but also for generations yet unborn. This touching (and naïve) belief in the efficacy of mere lumps of carbon is sure to ensure prosperity for jewelers, if not for the wearers of the stone.
The household lizard is another popular source of superstitions. The linnet – like noise it makes when it is in a good mood is supposed to indicate one’s good fortune or otherwise, but on one proviso. The almanac is quite definite (and quite uncompromising) that you have to know the direction the lizard is facing when it sounds off. Now, the lizard in my room has made its cozy home in my French window curtains and I can hardly be expected to mount a hazardous expedition to find out the direction of its head when it clears its throat. If that poor thing, losing its tenuous grip, happens to fall off on your person, you better prepare yourself for a fate worse than Mr. Cootes’. All in all, the poor lizard, minding its own tenuous business, has become the hapless whipping boy for man’s many misadventures.
Even in scientific – minded America, many skyscrapers don’t have, in theory at least, the thirteenth floor which seems most indefensible for without the thirteenth floor, the floors above it would come crashing down, earthquake or no earthquake.
Let us conclude by wishing a speedy recovery to the poor fellow who is hospitalized with serious injuries after the horse shoe he had hung over the door fell on him.
As for me, I am making sure that I am going out to post this article only during ‘Guliga Kalam’.

S. Raghunath