In 2009, it might be a discovery to find someone who wouldn’t shudder at the thought of burning a woman alive on her husband’s pyre. Then again, many of us would be equally surprised to find that ‘touch wood’ may be more than just a phrase or Feng Shui might be a superstition and not a style of interior decoration. To the contemporary urban mind, these practices are not illogical or unnatural. They are just harmless ‘habits’. A superstition, however, is always a superstition — a ritual that is beyond logic — be it the ancient custom of sati or a harmless ‘bless you’ whenever someone sneezes.

One of my friends almost got himself killed when he tried to stop his bike after spotting a cat crossing his way. The effort was not so much meant to save the cat, but because, according to a popular belief, a cat crossing your way is a ‘bad omen’ and you should stop for a while to ward off the effect. In many airlines, row number 14 comes straight after row number 12. Similarly, plenty of hotels do away with the 13th floor and room number 13. It’s done mostly from the apprehension that no customer will sit in the 13th row or book a room on the 13th floor. Such apprehensions, in most cases, seem to be true.

There is a popular concept that superstitions are born out of the lack of education. But here we are talking about people who are not just educated, but also aware, intelligent, and media-savvy. We are talking about a generation that has mostly done away with taboos on pre-marital sex and gender bias. One would think they had their rationality perfectly in place. But that does not always seem to be the case.

So, why do these ‘ideas’ grip us? Recently, I sneaked into a blog post by a girl who wrote that she does not cut her nails at night because her mother told her something ‘bad’ would happen if she did so. The funny part is, she does not know what exactly will happen, and neither does her mother. So, is it just that we do not care to bother about habits of thought and action that we automatically internalize through generations of mindless practice?

I myself feel weird with the number 13, although I realize perfectly well that there is no problem with that number. But the feeling seems instinctive, beyond my control. The psychoanalyst, Pushpa Misra, says superstitions thrive in the subconscious. They are born out of a “deep-rooted anxiety”, the fear of unknown consequences, something that our conscious minds cannot comprehend and do not want to. The guiding emotion here, she says, is a sense of support from a particular ritual that would protect us from such consequences. According to her, education influences the human mind up to a certain extent, but superstitions remain deep within, in the form of childhood anecdotes that stimulate the primal instinct of fear.

On the one hand, a number of us do carry superstitions within us, but do not admit them. On the other hand, some try to justify being superstitious, saying these values had originated from scientific reasoning. Uneducated people, who normally would fail to comprehend the reasoning, were made to believe these rituals would protect them from evil spirits. Even if such an argument had some validity, it is clear enough that the reasoning behind these rituals got eroded with time and no longer exists. Still, the rituals remain. From what Debasmita Raha, a young professional from south Calcutta, told me, it seems that certain superstitious practices are also a kind of ‘trend’ for the college-going generation. Debasmita remembers being a Linda Goodman enthusiast in college. “It would be a common topic of conversation, we would all sit together and discuss one another’s star signs,” she said. Although Debasmita does attach some significance to star signs, she admitted that she wouldn’t rely on them entirely. But according to her, younger, college-going people often judge others on the basis of star signs. When going through a tough time, they tend to blame it on the stars too, she said.

Linda Goodman’s Star Signs or Feng Shui are modern-day superstitions. They have nothing to do with age-old anecdotes. No use blaming it on parents, it’s we who have voluntarily adopted these mindless practices. What’s more worrying, younger people are more attached to these. What’s even more worrying is that the media — television channels, lifestyle magazines and the like — promote these superstitions with glee. Dangerously, in websites, online fora and articles, pseudo-logic is presented in reliable packaging to endorse these superstitions.

We often dismiss questions about the validity or necessity of superstitious rituals, saying that these are nothing but insignificant habits. Sometimes we don’t even realize that certain modes of behaviour, thought or feeling are superstitious. Let’s admit that a clearer understanding of where we stand on all this will help us probe deeper into our own minds and purge the insidious influence of childhood anecdotes about ‘evil’ spirits.