"TOUCH WOOD!"

"Fortunately," said our client, knocking three times on the wooden table top, "We've not had any major copyright issues in the last 10-12 years."

Quaint.

In an age when machines are slowly replacing humans, when Artificial Intelligence is no longer a theme for a sci-fi Hollywood flick, when scientific theories that we learned in school and college are being disproved by newer scientific discoveries everyday, It's quite amusing to see how we still carry these quaint little superstitions with us through the day and how we, almost always unconsciously, turn to them now and again.

As luck should have it, my residence was plagued by a relentless little rodent that wreaked havoc in its wake... Mum began hanging the groceries and other edible items on nails and hooks that she had, in her maternal foresight, put around the kitchen for such an eventuality. It took a while to convince her that in this case prevention wasn't better than cure and that we would indeed have to resort to rat poison or at least a mousetrap.

I come back home from office the next day and my mum looks at me with a glow in her eyes! "He's taken the bait," she said.
"Who? What bait?" I asked
My mum starts playing dumb charades with me... She holds out her hands close to her face, wrinkles her nose and pouts her lips doing, what she thought was, an impression of a mouse...
"I still don't get it!" I said.
Frustrated she mouths in Hakka, "Lao-chu-aye!"
"Rat?"
"Shhh... Don't say their name!" She reprimanded, "Your grandma used to say that when they (rats) hear their name, they become alert and refuse to leave the house!"
"What?"
"Yes, and we just got some poison last night and this morning it was gone... (The rest of the conversation fades into obscurity)".

Of course, I giggled at the thought, but I couldn't help but think of all those times that I'd given in to those superstitious beliefs. Just the last day, while absent-mindedly playing with a pair of scissors, I couldn't stop myself from rubbing those scissors on the ground to ward off any chances of getting into a fight with a loved one. Another time, I experienced a throbbing in my right eye; one that faithfully followed me for two days thereafter. On the second day of the eye-flickering ordeal, I turned to my colleague and reported it to her. She said, "It is considered a good omen for the right eye to flicker... Or is the left one? I'm not sure... One of them is good and the other one bad..."

Once while travelling by the company bus, a colleague jumped over another to get to the other side of the bus. The latter had recently suffered a bad sprain in the ankle and was resting her leg on the adjacent seat, across the gangway. One of the co-passengers quipped, "You shouldn't cross over people like that... It reduces their height and their growth ceases!" (My colleague with the sprained ankle is 26.)

When it comes to omens and superstitions, I think Indians lead the whole foray, all the way! We have delved into the auspicious and inauspicious since time immemorial. It appears that there was a whole slump in these beliefs somewhere around the 80's and 90's. With times getting increasingly unpredictable and difficult and with the blooming of the whole Vaastu and Feng Shui industry (ha!) it does give a sense of comfort that we are given signs of events to come and that we can, in a very small way, read those signs and not be taken completely by surprise when that event occurs!

Hmmm... Is it just me or is my right palm really itching? That's a sign that there's money coming my way, right? Or is it the left palm? So, am I going to lose some precious green in the near future? In any case, ‘Forewarned is Forearmed’... And I'm ready… Touch Wood!

P.S.: It appears mum's rat superstition did help after all! Not only did we catch the little fellow, in a trap that we borrowed from our neighbour, but we also managed to get two of his buddies with the rat poison that mum had 'planted' at strategic locations in the kitchen. I guess, there'll be no more ra... Shhh... (ahem!) in my house now! ;)