A few days ago, we celebrated Rakhi with all its pomp and splendor. As per custom my sisters tied colourful rakhis on my wrist. After the ceremonies my wrist resembled what someone said about the first impression that one gets when seeing a group of East Indian women in traditional attire – they are instantly hit by a riot of colours. Each Rakhi was a piece of art on its own – with velvet threads running through its own universe of colourful and sparkling beads. Each Rakhi somehow reflected the personality of the person who had so lovingly tied it to my wrists. All said and done the strands ran straight, each living in harmony with the other.
However, after a few days on my way to work, I noticed something that upset my rather superstitious middle class Bengali mind. This mindset, which I have also noticed in some of my peers with the same cultural yet is susceptible to notions of premonitions, signs and some articles of faith that the rational mind finds amusing. Perhaps as off springs of a generation that survived the great partition of British India, scanning for adverse (real or perceived) signals in the environment is a risk management technique that we have imbibed in ourselves. Darwinian you might say – but to get back, what I noticed was that the threads of my rakhis had shed their straight contours and had twists in themselves. They also had tangled with each other.
Having seen this set my alarm bells ringing. Were the twists reflective of my current relationships with my sisters? You may find this amusing or laughable – but in a world where reality is trumped over by perceived notions, one cannot take chances. When people do not feel that they can ask a person directly about an issue that bothers them but decide otherwise by the way that a person looked at them -‐ then there is a problem.
So given that background, I was concerned that something was wrong. From where did the twists arise in the strands? Why were the strands intertwined? I felt that this could be signs from above – much like the tea reading oracles of the ancient world. Did I neglect a sister? Did I not reach her when she was in need? Is she angry with me? Are the relationships between my sisters, okay? Did these sour because of something I did?
Faced with this predicament I wondered what to do? Should I straighten the strands myself? Should I separate the rakhis myself? What if one snapped – would that also be a sign of things to come? What if things got more twisted? Would that be a forecast for darker days? Could I be a contributor to this? Therefore, I was faced with trepidation when I met with my sisters a few days later.
When one of them did not hug or talk to me initially, I knew the strands were right in the prediction – But when she later came and gave me a big bear hug – my reliance on the twists dropped a little. Throughout that evening I found out my relations with my sisters were as warm as ever. Now that I know that the Gods do not talk through strands can I be free from my other vulnerabilities, I wonder?