Until a rational explanation was advanced in the media, incidents of Ganesh idols drinking milk were thought to be a miracle and evidence of the act were considered as solid as the idols themselves.
For sure, even rationalists (the hesitant variety) experienced a Hamletian dilemma — whether to believe it or not. Though that is an old story, even now such rumours fed on superstition will hardly go unheeded. And no amount of explanation will remove the scales from the eyes of believers, because as philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote: “Man is a credulous animal and he must believe in something. In the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.”
“Henceforth, if a cat crosses your path, you take a couple of steps backwards and then proceed so as to ward off the ill-effects,” once I heard my wife tell our daughter, who had sought her expert advice on this feline conundrum.
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Thirteen is considered an unlucky number by many. They cock a snook at anything numbered 13. In Jakarta, one came across buildings not merely shy of the 13th floor but devoid of the fourth floor as well. However, nearer home, in Mumbai, buildings are not generally known to skip the 13th floor. Nevertheless, we express our contempt for the numeral differently.
As everybody knows, we have a passion for spitting in public places indiscriminately. We pander to this passion with a vengeance. The walls around the stairs in several highrise buildings in Mumbai's Nariman Point, with smears of reddish betel juice on them, are silent victims of our passion. I have often felt that walls around the staircase leading to the 13th floor have more than their share of smears. One wonders if this could be attributed to people's indignation at number 13.
They say ignorance is bliss. Then the Trobriand islanders were a blissful lot. They superstitiously ascribed a woman's pregnancy to some spirit who, they believed, inserted the infant inside her. Little did they know of the human role! So, when a man returned home from a voyage, lasting years, and found his wife with a newborn child, he was beside himself with joy. He celebrated the event. Naturally, the people had no sense of being cheated on by his wife. And there was no question of his flying furiously at the throat of her paramour. Since promiscuity was not frowned upon on that island, guilt did not weigh her down either.
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When anthropologist Malinowski tried to debunk their superstition surrounding sex, the islanders rebuffed him. At one point, the chief of the islanders thought he proved Malinowski wrong when he cited an example. His daughter, married a couple of years ago, lost her husband the very day of their wedding. He had been to a faraway island, never to return. “Look, my daughter is pregnant now. But for the intervention of the spirits how could this be possible,” the chief asked Malinowski with an air of triumph. Lest he offend the chief, Malinowski suppressed his laughter.
In point of fact, no bird has been associated with superstition as much as the poor owl. It's a much maligned creature. Its cry is considered ominous and the very sight of the bird is loathsome to many. But attitudes of people to this avian, soaked in superstition, vary from culture to culture. You can't help being amused at an interesting contrast. In the West, it is generally considered a symbol of solemnity and wisdom. But in our part of the world a stupid person is euphemistically called ullu , owl colloquially.
Come to think of it, superstition is a necessary evil. How else fortune-tellers, soothsayers, and a host of others, pseudo-scientists though they are, will survive? To our desire to have a peek at our future owes the livelihood of many of them. But is that a good ground to let superstition go unopposed?
(The writer's email id is: cvsuku46@gmail.com)