Salty superstitions

The billion people of India still believe in a million odd superstitions. Though India has progressed enormously on various fronts, dropping off these superstitions is something it has still not been able to achieve. As a result, a part of India is still struck in the past.

One of the most common superstitions is that passing salt hand to hand causes the two persons involved to get into a fight. Is there a logic behind this? I can’t find any. Can you? People till this day and this includes people in my family believe in this and make sure that they never pass salt. They just move the salt jar a little closer, when asked to pass whereas they are willing to pass other huge vessels into the hand. If logic is allowed to speak, it would be advised not to pass other vessels containing rice or dal hand to hand because the weight of the vessel may be too much for the hand and sometimes they may slip out of the hand.

Every superstition or custom has a history behind it. There is a hidden logic behind everything. For example, it is well-known that Indians use far more spices in their food than do the people of the west. Why? There is a reason. India is a hot place and in the olden days there were no refrigerators. So, more salt, more oil and more spices helped retain the food longer. As an analogy, observe the same thing is done with pickles. Lot of salt and oil and also pickle is generally prepared in summer. The west was cooler and so there was no need to worry about preservation. Now, in India there are no preservation problems with a refrigerator in almost every house (at least in urban India) but, we are still continue the practice. The purpose is lost but the practice goes on.

We call it our tradition, our culture and retain many such blind illogical beliefs. We are just denying to drop off the past and move ahead. I would like to quote another example. During some festivals, women go to snake holes, burrows or pits and offer milk to the snake to please the snake goddess. Science has proved that snakes do not drink milk and if anything, the milk that is poured will suffocate and kill the snake thereby, displeasing the goddess, in case of her existence. Why do people still flood their pits with gallons of milk? In this process, lot of milk which can otherwise be used to feed the needy is thrown to the ground. My grandmother proudly claims that these beliefs are only increasing and the crowd at the snake pits is only increasing. Isn’t this sad?

Then, I had a discussion with her, my granny, and explained her all this. She says she is not bothered and it is an age old custom and she will follow till she is alive. When I say that she could kill the snake, she says there are no snakes in the pit. What is the point then? I ask. She shrugs off the question and goes away furious that I questioned her age old practice.

I tried to get her rid of her belief about salt and fight. I very devotedly planned and made sure that each day she give me salt straight into my hand else, I would not eat food. This worked for many days and each day I showed that we never fought and how the superstition is wrong. I thought she understood till the day she launched a full fledged attack on me saying that she will drop the salt jar to the floor in case I tried to get her to give me the salt straight to my hand. She was furious and my sister joined the chorus. I was heart broken and dejected. I put the salt jar on the table and returned to my room. She had succeeded. She proved the superstition right. Salt causes fight. With the fear of resurrecting her faith in that superstition I held back all my efforts.

I had lost the war at home. I began the war at home. I thought I will take it to the world after I had won it at home. But, I lost the war. But, it is only the war I lost and not my hope. I will keep fighting in newer and better ways to get most people at home if not all to drop these superstitions. I guess its time we all started such wars, get people to think rationally and question age old established customs. Start from the homes and friends. This way the campaign will spread and one day India will get rid of most of its superstitions.

Now the question, why the fuss? Hmm. Remember how few years earlier lord Ganesh drank milk. There was a scarcity of milk for a few weeks after that. The loss was clearly visible and quantifiable because it was a sensation and more importantly it happened at the same time all over India. Many other things like this keep happening day in and day out in separate incidents and so the loss is overlooked. If this loss in all its forms is quantified the results will be shocking. Is that all? As if this is a small thing in a country still wretched by poverty. But, there is a bigger issue. What these superstitions do is make people, especially the younger generation, weak minded, what India needs is a strong-willed younger generation not a generation that waits for five minutes after sneezing because sneezing brings bad luck or goes back to home on seeing a black cat in the way.