Category: religion

India seems to have had a rich history when it comes to mathematics. Our ancestors are supposed to have done great things such as inventing the numeral system that we used today. However, I’m not sure how good we have been at logic. I’m not talking about anything advanced here. I’m thinking of basic stuff such as one way implications.

What is common to the following superstitions/customs?

• You should never shave your head unless you are offering the hair to God
• You should never light a fire in front of your house
• You should never throw around vessels on the floor

The list goes on but I can’t remember anything else right now. However, I can assure you that there are several more of these. This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but it is most likely an exhausting list.

What connects all these is the fact that they are associated with death. You are supposed to shave your head when a parent dies. Similarly a fire is lit in front of the house when someone dies. And throwing around vessels is part of the death ceremonies.

What has happened is that all these one way implications have been misunderstood down the generations and have turned into two way implications. The rule states “if someone in the house dies, you light a fire in front of it”. And down a few dozen logically illiterate generations, it has been understood as “you light a fire in front of a house if and only if someone who lives there dies”. Note that suddenly, a one way implication has become a two way implication! Similarly with shaving your head and throwing around vessels. And with the rest of the exhausting list that I can’t remember at this point of time.

So the next time someone rebukes you regarding one of these stupid customs that are supposed to be “associated with death”, while they are only associated in one direction, tell them that they are saying this because they and their ancestors couldn’t understand simple logic.

Over ten years back, my mother had asked my father when they were going to conduct my thread ceremony. My father had replied, “You think either of us will die soon?” My thread ceremony eventually took place in May 2001, some five years after this conversation.

You frequently come across mostly elderly relatives lamenting the fact that youngsters nowadays don’t have much interest in religion, and parents are also not doing their bit. They crib that earlier, most boys would have their threads by the time they had reached double digits, and this would ensure a more religious upbringing. However, nowadays, with thread ceremony being delayed up to the twenties, and even up to the day before the wedding (for people belonging to castes that wear the thread, the thread is a prerequisite for marriage), the elders feel that this is preventing kids from being more religious.

I’m not sure if the increase in average age has to do anything with how religious the parents are. It’s simply a consequence of higher life expectancy. If you are a boy belonging to a caste that normally wears the thread, you need to have had your thread ceremonies in order to conduct your parents’ death ceremonies. If you don’t have the thread yet at the time when one of your parents dies, some other relative has to do this thing, and you are supposed to get bad karma from this.

Hence, even fifty years ago, when average life expectancy was quite low and it was reasonably common for people to tell jai when their kids were still young, people would want to make sure that there was a good chance that their sons had a thread by the time the parents told jai. And hence, the thread ceremony would happen fairly quickly after the kid had attained the minimum age of 8.

Nowadays, with people living longer on the average, and the probability of someone dying leaving behind a young kid being fairly low, there isn’t much incentive to have the thread ceremony really early. People prefer to wait until their sons are old enough to understand the significance of the thread, the ceremony, etc.