I can’t believe I have not posted for a month now. I can go on about why I haven’t written but that hardly matters. I just want to write something today. Not that today is an auspicious day for re-starting things. You know that right? There is an auspicious day to resume things that have once been abandoned. As far as I can think, I never cared too much about auspicious days and all that. You know that I’m a believer when it comes to astrology but auspicious day . . erm . . no.

Sometimes people follow certain things not because they believe in it. May be they follow just because they are superstitious about it. Well, there are two terms – belief and superstition – which go very close to each other and can be misunderstood for each other based on from which side you’re looking from. Let me clarify like this. You can truly believe that certain days are auspicious and certain days are not. If you wanted to do certain things only on auspicious days just because it has worked everytime for you, may be you can call it superstition. The thin line here is, you might want to do certain things only on a Friday because you think it has always worked for you. Then again, it might be called supersitition.

They way I define it, belief should have rationale – for instance one might believe in auspicious days because he believes that the daily movements of planets have an impact on the earth and its inhibitants. Whereas superstition is just blind and irrational. Even preferences and choices can be blind and irrational, or just subjective to put it gently. I can wear my white shirt for every important occasion because I like it or because that would look good on me. That’s choice or preference. But if I wear that white shirt because it brings me good luck, that is supersitition. The dangerous thing with superstitions is that it sometimes borders on obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD). But I’m talking here only about the lighter ones.

I have beliefs as well as superstitions. I can talk to you very proudly about my beliefs because they are backed by rationale. The superstitions can be a bit embarrassing because they are stupid and baseless. The funny thing is, I very well know that they are stupid and baseless but I just do them. May be, that best explains superstitions. It’s also embarrasing because we think we are very rational, objective and thoughtful and then come up with some nonsense as supersititions. I have a superstition that full moon day is always the best day of the month for me.

We love to hear the superstitions of each other because they can be unique and they can be funny. I’m not planning to give you the exhaustive list of my superstitions but I can give you one. Ever since I heard (15 years back) that Sachin Tendulkar wears his left side of his kits first, I’ve just been following it. Sachin always wears his left shoe before wearing his right one and same with socks, gloves and everything. Strangely, even I’ve been wearing my left shoe or sandal first before wearing my right ones. That’s harmless anyway because you would wear them in a gap of few seconds so it does not really catch anyone’s eyes or look ridiculous. In other words, it’s not the same as not changing your posture on the chair because keep scoring.

What kind of superstitions do you have? Do you always wear your watch on the right hand so you can get the movie ticket? Or do you watch cricket standing because your team is on a rampage and you don’t want that to stop? Or you always carry your lucky handbag so you can get a job? We might even find out that some of the superstitions are not, after all, unique. Tell us more.