Traversing Alongside Superstitions

My dad was just stepping out

To purchase the weekly groceries

From a far corner, I was tempted to shout

''Where are you going, tell me please’’?

The words escaped me accidentally

An old habit, picked up as an inquisitive kid

More than intentional, rather inadvertently

But too late it was, it was a wrong thing I did

For I had just stirred up a hornet’s nest

My granny who was tying her hair

Shot up with a leap of zest

Nearly uprooting the chair

She charged for'ard training her guns

On her hapless grandson who stared at the preacher

''How many times have I told you?'' she bellowed, ''don’t you have any sense?''

Not to ask someone leaving the house on whereabouts about the departure

Hmm, so I am sure you got the hold

Grasping the underlying theme,

A common scene in a Tamil household

Where superstitions reign supreme

One evening looking into the mirror

Realized the hair was disheveled, beard unkempt

A sight I recoiled with horror

The uncomfortable scene I began to pre-empt

Slowly opened the door, hoping to plot a secret escape

To my favorite salon the 'Green Trends'

When my shrewd mother spotted the door agape

Sadly there wasn’t time to make quick amends

''Don’t you know it is a Tuesday'' ?

She chided, clenching her teeth

The barber is shunned today

I returned to my room, in anger I could only seeth

One night, at the foot of the table, I stubbed my toe

Rocketing up instantly, groaning in pain

Little realizing the nails I had allowed to grow

For personal hygiene isn’t my expertised domain

I went and fetched a nail cutter

Once the blood stopped to ooze

Lingering pain was still bitter

But now was ready to cater to the bruise

The nails I started chopping away

When granny shimmered into the hall

At the sight of her I stopped midway

Face automatically turning towards the wall

Nails shouldn’t be cut post setting of the sun

She serves as a final warning

To her beloved grandson

''Go to bed. You can cut them in the morning''

One day, I was rushing to catch a flight

Knowing the appalling traffic, I had only a glimmer

Of hope, still cutting it a bit too tight

Untimely moments precipitated to make prospects dimmer

Collecting my luggage, I hurried outdoors

Waiting for the upcoming elevator

Which finally emerged, after traversing all the floors

And out stepped a bloody traitor

Impatiently I brushed him aside to irrupt

Inside, when my flouncing mother began to holler

In my tracks I was stopped abrupt

As she pulled me back inside the home by my collar

Sensing that her fogged son was seeking elucidation

She elucidated, “He looked ash-smeared and one of our ilk

Spotting one while stepping out is a bad omen

So pause for a couple of minutes, while I get you some milk”

Punctuated from time to time, I live through archaic Brahminical

Beliefs, sometimes impacting, holding me at ransom

Never to date have I received any empirical

Evidence, sometimes painless but nonetheless irksome

I never minded the ladies fingers when I expected a feast

On the eve of the mathematics test

Or prostate to elders facing the revered east

While receiving a monetary gift at their behest

I also accept the illogical appendages demanding adherency

In the process, which come naturally concomitant

Such as the random coin to the note of currency

And I will still drink in these minor irritants

But many a time I beseech, in a voice near tragic

Upping the ante, with a cri de couer

Will you give me some bloody logic

And Each time, my plea they ignore

A cornocupia of unconfounded myths

And emetic superstitions reign retrograde

As science and rationality defying faiths

Keep getting passed down generations by the Blue Rinse Brigade

As their rigidity and senescence

Begins to ossify with passing years

So has my patiently inculcated acquiescence

Sometimes to trod the path, sometimes to let it fall on deaf ears