Would you go ahead on your way if a black cat crosses your path? Or would you throw a stone over the cat's line before taking your next step? The intention behind doing so, is to deflect the evil effect from the black cat to the stone, as it would cross the path before you do! Hang on for a moment before you scoff at this absurdity; there are people in our society, who believe that a random black cat can control their fate. People who are breathing in 2022 but still living in the medieval era! If that cat had the ability to write, imagine its diary note that night - "Today, I jumped across the guy from 3rd floor on his way to office. I had been offered fish curry meals by his neighbor - a cost effective 'Shatrusamhara pooja'! Unfortunately, nothing happened to him, so my offer got cancelled. A disappointing day, and a jump was wasted, now my paws ache too!"

Humans have deviously identified omens using all sorts of defenseless animals and things around us. These generalizations have started from the occurrence of an event somewhere down the history lane, a mere coincidence! For instance, guests might have arrived one day when the crow cawed but deducing the conclusion that guests would visit every time the crow caws near your house, is outright ridiculous! If that's the case, in modern day apartment culture, crows need to be more specific. D Block, 11th floor, Door No.12 would not be that easy for the crow to deliver the caw warning! There's more - lizards are the truth bearers, a lonely Mynah (bird) is bad but a couple is good (apparently, being single is no fun!), a grasshopper brings forth fortune, the infamous ring made out of elephant's tail hair is for luck and prosperity, hundreds of beliefs on crows mostly associated with death (ending up naming a group of crows as ‘murder’), parrots predicting the future (parakeet astrology), and even the tiny little ants aren't spared - red ants are bad, but black ones are auspicious! There is no objective evidence in any of these beliefs, yet people continue to follow, just because it makes them feel they are in control of their future.

During olden days, people were chaotic, and imparting common sense through logic hardly helped to ensure caution. Instilling fear using scary stories about supernatural forces was the sought-out solution to make people obey and bring about order and structure to the society. But these customs and rituals were blindly followed disregarding the social reformations, and the rationale was completely forgotten. One example is that older people still insist on avoiding cutting nails, sweeping the floor, or combing your hair after dusk. In a time when electricity was not available, doing these things at night would have had an adverse effect, but why should this be prevalent in a society where 50W LED lights brighten up your nights, perhaps a few lumens more inside the house! Some of these were reasonable during those days when there was shortage on necessities of life. The age-old belief on menstrual impurity is another such misbelief and is embedded so deep in the conservative minds even today. In the absence of sophisticated sanitary pads or tampons, traveling long distances or doing heavy works were difficult. An option that was installed for women to take proper care and rest, has turned into an impurity narrative prohibiting them from temple, touching 'sacred' plants etc., while conveniently excluding kitchen and household works from the list. How can it still be a taboo when women are conquering even the toughest physical sports and are simply unstoppable on all calendar days! Same way, we haven’t been able to move past the belief that the positions of certain planetary objects influence our destiny along with the script called horoscope that claims to forecast the events of one's life. Since horoscope is written based on the time of birth, nowadays people are “choosing” auspicious day/time of birth in case of C-Section or induced delivery to make sure the baby is blessed with all sorts of auspicious yogas. Ironically, advancement in science is used to effectuate superstition by pre-calculating one’s life.

No matter how progressive and educated we claim to be, we still see a rush to buy gold on the Akshaya Tritiya Day. It is believed that purchasing gold on that day would bring good luck as the gold bought on this day would never diminish and only grow more and more. Although, there's one difference these days people are buying digital gold too on that day, thanks to Digital Revolution! Our mindsets are seasoned with such practices and beliefs passed on to us from our older generations. Questioning them would be labelled as most disrespectful, and many a times, absence of a logical explanation is met with another superstitious threat - 'Bad things will happen to you, if you disobey!' along with different types of "curses". This doesn't stop here, the list is endlessly filled with beliefs on dream interpretation, fortune telling, divination, dodging the evil eye, palmistry, numerology, black magic rituals, sorcery, exorcism, and even grave issues like human sacrifices. Recent events in Kerala’s Elanthoor on human sacrifice are an example of sheer ignorance and blind faith. Shockingly, it has come to the extent where people are willing to follow these practices even at the cost of other human lives.

Science has grown in leaps and bounds and continuing its pursuit to find answers to literally everything. Even in such a time our education hardly encourages questioning the system. Even highly educated people follow many of these practices for good luck. The "Touchwood" comment in online social networking platforms to avert bad luck is an example for that. Literacy rate of Kerala cannot be pulled into this either as the ability to read and write cannot guarantee the presence of common sense and logical thinking. Enlightenment begins when we seek answers and find the origins of these beliefs. While we wait for centralized laws to deal with inhuman evil practices and superstitions, change should begin from our homes. This generation is in our hands, and we are in charge for molding the next, so take a moment before exclaiming "Sathyam!" when the lizard chirps, else come up with an explanation to answer your kid's quizzical expression, staring at you and the lizard!