Save The Last Roti

Superstitions. Every country, culture, religion, community and family seems to have adopted a superstitious belief in one way or another. Be it from not walking on the cracks of the pavement, refusal to use the number 13 or not washing your hair on certain days, it is a fascinating topic with an intriguing history.

Being of Indian heritage I, along with many others, have grown up surrounded by elders telling me there are certain things I shouldn’t do for fear that I will be engaging in sinful activity, or as my Ba would say, ‘paap lagse’. Annoying I know, but not as annoying when these fables cannot be backed up to explain why it is sinful (not that I believe in sin – something I’ll blog about another day). So I took matters into my own hands and tried to understand the origin of some of these beliefs. Yes, non-Indians, be prepared to read some outlandish stuff.

Girls shouldn’t wash their hair on a Wednesday.
The importance and role of women in Indian culture aside, this belief is something that 90% of Hindu families I know seem to practice. It’s one of the superstitions many people ask me about. The folk story goes on to say that if a girl does happen to wash her hair on a Wednesday, then her brother dies.

I warned you this could get strange.

Most of these superstitions date back many hundreds of years. After doing some internet research and asking a few of the wise (old) people, it turns out that this stemmed from the simple fact that access to water was limited. It may come as a shock to some of you, but before water was taken out of a tap, bottled and sold to us for extortionate prices, people had to collect their own supply by drawing water from wells, streams, water barrels etc, then carry it back to their houses which could take up a substantial amount of time. This water had to be used for the majority of tasks required and more so when rainfall was at a minimum. The water therefore had to be rationed (aka the great village hosepipe ban) and Wednesday was that given day. Quite why they chose Wednesday is beyond me, but that’s the most logical explanation I can think of. FYI there’s nothing in Hindu scriptures to suggest that it’s a bad omen to wash hair on a Wednesday.

As for the brother dying thing – despite the fact that I would love to see this argument used in a court case, a girl probably washed her hair on a Wednesday and her brother died because of an unconnected event, bringing shock and horror to other villagers who saw this as a sign from ‘the almighty’ to not perform such an evil act.

You shouldn’t cut your nails at night.
Ah, another classic that comes up time and time again. This time it’s not as complex as water shortages and village hosepipe bans. Nope, this time it’s to do with the lack of light.

That’s right folks, lack of adequate lighting meant that visibility was poor during the dark evenings. Cutting your nails in the dark light could have resulted in one of your nails going AWOL, only for you to step on it later on, causing a sharp and uncomfortable pain. So the evening ban on cutting nails was put into place.

Don’t eat the last roti/always save one roti at the end of a meal.
As I found out the difficult way, this is not something many people still do, but there are some families that continue to do this without actually realising it’s a superstitious belief. The tale goes that if you eat the last roti on the plate, your family will starve. Or something like that. I know my family continue to do this (leave a roti, not starve), but I never questioned why until a few years ago. The answer I was given: “What if God were to come to your house for dinner, and you had no roti to feed him?” How poetic. But immediately I understood what was meant by this. Without getting into a religious discussion, Hinduism in all its depth and philosophy teaches us that all living beings are God. Not God in the all-powerful deity that abrahamic faiths generally believe, but more so an understanding that all living beings are a part of God. Ie – God is the Jigsaw puzzle and each soul is a jigsaw piece.

To delve just a little bit further, a well-known shloka (verse) from the Vedas (and the tagline for India’s tourist industry) is atithi devo bhava meaning ‘treat your guest as God’. This hopefully puts it into perspective. The idea is to save some food just in case a guest was to turn up at your door unannounced (which isn’t uncommon in Indian families), you would have some food to feed them with. Kinda deep and I like the meaning behind that one.

There are many others that exist and I will certainly try to blog about them in the future.

The message to take away from this post is that we shouldn’t just accept things the way they are. If something doesn’t make sense or seems illogical, then question it (well, at least Google it), and try to understand it. I’m not saying go and lecture your Grandma about the logical explanation of not washing hair on Wednesdays, because she grew up in a different time and is more than likely to be content with the way she does things. However, make changes for the future. The majority of our parents never took the time to question these little foibles because they were busy working 18 hours a day, and although it’s not an easy ride for us by any means, we do have access to knowledge and information at our fingertips. We should’ve fear asking questions, because how else can we learn?

FYI, I don’t claim the examples above are completely true but they are responses and interpretations that make the most sense to me.

I would also like to thank the following tweeps for their input and suggestions. Follow them, they’re all superstars:

@RahulPuri5, @nizbizz, @ranjeetruprai, @MizzKrish, @PreeyaV1, @ViveckC, @KoshaV, @Sachinism_ICF, @crazyurbanlife, @lavishwreck, @MBrahmz, @rhea_d21

‘Ere Come Da KhandBapa.. Chaiwalla..**

Welcome, and thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

It’s taken some time for me to finally get around to setting it up, but after seeing the creativity and potential of other people’s blogs, in the end I succumbed to temptation.

You should know this isn’t my first blog. My first blog was just far too random and sporadic, so it’s just in cyberspace gathering cob-webs.

If you’ve read the ‘Aa Shu Che’ tab at the top, you’ll get an idea as to who I am, and why the blog is so-called. Yes my nickname is KhandBapa (Gujarati: Khand=Sugar, Bapa=Daddy) and no I did not decide to give myself the name. It was first coined back in 2008, when a group of friends kept calling me Sugar Daddy (through my love of masala chai, no doubt) and after countless fits of laughter, it eventually evolved into the Gujarati form as seen today.

I guess a pre-requisite of the ‘Bapa’ title is that people assume I’m much older than I actually am- not always a bad thing, mind you. I guess I don’t help myself in that respect either. I enjoy my chai, I chew paan and am a HUGE Moh’d Rafi fan. But I still live the life of a 20-something year old, I just like to say that I’m beyond my years .

Anywho, this blog will be the space in which I can air my views about life, situations, people, current affairs, food, religion and my most favourite subject: Aaj kaal na chokrao (kids these days). At this point you should take note that I have a habit to add random Gujarati phrases and sentences when I write, I shall try to translate as often as possible for all the non-Gujarati followers.

So go make me a cup of chai, sit back and enjoy the rants.

I bid you adieu,

KhandBapa.

** A play on Ini Kamoze’s “Here Comes The Hotstepper”. A rather poor attempt of me trying to sound cool.