the good, the bad, and the uncanny

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Two things happen on the fourth of January in 2020. In Karnataka, an anti-superstition law comes into action after much debate and discussion on the presence of extreme practices in the country; practices inhumane yet weirdly satisfying for many as the context of a grisly low-budget horror – exorcism, ostracizing, and public display of nudity among others. In my home on a tranquil plain in Kerala, I leave the place to only return back without making my journey – for a random cat has passed me on the street. A cat? A random cat? Well, okay, you know the drill. The poor thing was black.

Of the despairing hours spent home in solitude during the early days of the pandemic, there appeared the possibility of a solid connection between the black cat and the controversial law. If we were to stray a little from the discussions that went into the making of the law or the belief, what remains is a framework of an array of questions beginning why:

Why do we have these beliefs?

Why do we need laws to prevent some?

Why believe in a law any more than you believe in a belief?

The Hindustan Times article that surfaced on October 16, 2020, titled ‘What a weird superstition’ collates multiple accounts of Bollywood celebrities and their superstitions; some they carry along believing in it themselves, few they find too ridiculous in their existence. To engage with Sanjay Kapoor’s interesting bit of information about his life might just be the key to disentangling the intricate whys above.

Imagine if Sanjay Kapoor were to make a stance, let be known in his family, that from a particular instant, he has chosen to abandon the ‘problematic’ t-shirt from his life. For it is only normal to have a regular piece of clothing or an ordinary supply of article face neglect in a household due to various personal reasons, the t-shirt dilemma will end up no more than a passing apparition the family blends with. They’ll talk about it at parties, describe it in detail for reporters, it could even get featured in some random channels on television at an odd hour. Then eventually all is well and the entire affair - forgotten. But only the belief grows, coils itself up, takes new form; before they even know it, it has begun a run down the family line. Say if documentation of this information survives the test of time, a few generations down the lane, it might provide the bewildered young Kapoors some obscure answers on why they never get to wear t-shirts at all while the rest of the world does.

Therefore, straying away from the origins doesn’t sound like a hot idea anymore. However, the complexity of the matter cannot be simplified or generalized in every case there is; for beliefs hold various disparate beginnings (found today to be rooted in a scientific base or uncanny coincidences or both), uncertain developments, and that too conceived in distant lands, totally foreign parts of the world. Quite like the mysterious disease that killed off the members of the Muka Talam tribe in the remote villages of Odisha last year, understanding the kind of confidence that our minds put in beliefs can be an attempt at solving a puzzle but with few distorted pieces that never seem to fit in. The so-called rationality of laws and the irrationality of superstitions then find a common ground: their binding of humans toward convictions as stable as the surface of a quicksand.

Also, if you're still wondering about those tribal deaths, health officials later confirmed it an aftermath of anaemia and alcoholism.