A superstitious mind

Then he slowly opens his eyes and tries to sense if he is lying on his left or right side. If he sees a dream at night, its implications depend on which side he wakes up. But he has learnt one thing over the years. Dreams which come in the wee hours of the morning come from the future. When he was a student, he used to see the same questions in his dreams, which appeared in the tests. He always dreams of being in foreign countries, before he knows he is going to travel. If he sees disturbing dreams, he knows troubles are waiting him just around the corner.

Every morning he blows his nose, opens his eyes and wonders how life is a rhythmic experience of dreams and nightmares. There are some dreams which come again and again. He sees himself swimming when stars fall from the sky and float in the water. Sometimes he sees himself drowning in a swamp, screaming with a searing voice that has phantasmal resonance within the boundaries of heaven and earth. Those nights he pays special attention to which side he wakes up and carefully blows his nose so that he doesn't miss any portentous signs.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

When the body is relaxed, its gates are left open so that the soul can enjoy its freedom. He has always thought that dreams are when the soul gets out of its prison cell and goes for a walk. The soul is like a servant in the house, who goes to see the town when the master is taking a nap. It sneaks out of the sleeping body and returns as quickly as it wakes up.

It is important to follow the signals of the body to understand what is happening in the soul. One must discipline the body to control the mind. He compares his habits to the practice of yoga, entering the house with the right foot first, advancing the left foot to step out of a toilet. He discards broken comb, cracked mirrors, tattered clothes, chipped plates, and worn out shoes, because a deprived body can deplete the soul.

But the body does not always keep up with the soul. Fear, anxiety, uncertainty and sorrow reverberate through the body like wicked spirits in a haunted house. Nightmares are when the soul is lonely inside a busy body and sweet dreams are when both are equally engaged. His grandmother saw a dream in which her father had come to take her home. She walked with him and disappeared behind a smokescreen, waking up to tell friends and relatives that the time had come for her to go. Three months later she died in her sleep.

The soul often gives up before the body and the body does not know it. Saints and ascetics meditate and starve to punish the body so that it learns to obey the soul. He thinks his soul speaks to him through his body, through the sneezes, twitching muscles, clear nostril, dreams, itching palms, quivering eyebrows, and also by sheer thoughts which fortuitously cross his mind like drifting clouds.

The days his nose is clogged, he flips coin or deals cards to take decisions. He takes two of the three outcomes, and in worst cases uses his intuition. But intuitions cannot be right unless the conscience is clean and the body is pure. So he will wash himself and say his prayer before he consults with the soul. He hates to look at upturned shoes or sandals, undergarments of women and swept dirt gathered in front of doors in the house. If crows caw in the morning near his doors or windows, he is almost certain that he will hear the news of someone's death.

If anything, life is an elusive beast that lives and dies in its own fury. Doubts, inhibitions, hopes, expectations, ecstasy and heartbreak, everything percolates through life's longing for itself in the same manner a rocket soars while burning out its fuel or a candle burns down in the excitement of bearing the flame. He is careful when he eats, and picks up every grain of rice he drops. He believes he will be accountable for the food he wastes, because it is God's grace that some have enough to eat while others starve for days.

He believes butterflies are harbingers of wedding bells, be them fluttering in the house or alighting on someone who is not married. He believes when someone sneezes before a journey is commenced, it is the sign of good luck. He does not like dogs wailing in the middle of the night, because that is the ominous sign of an imminent danger. His notion of people with splay foot is that they come of low stock. Women who laugh aloud annoy him because it is the unmistakable indication of loose character. A man wearing his wristwatch on the right hand sends clear message that he is of frivolous nature.

In his mind, life works out its own balance. He who laughs by day goes to bed crying at night. Early success brings late distress. Pride has its fall. What goes around comes around. If anything goes up, it can only come down. He who endears endures. A stitch in time saves nine. Forty rounds to the knave, one round goes to the brave.

At times his mind grows weary of reading those signals, observing and analysing everything he sees, hears, reads and captures. But then these signals are everywhere and people do not always get them right. People dream all the time and they have nightmares all the time, just like the stars which are out there in the sky but can be seen only at night! Life is talking to us every moment, in every move, every gesture, every tickle and every itch. Everything is an expression of existence, life whispering through the blowing wind, like the humming sound of ripples in the leaden silence of a profound stream.

People laugh at him. They blame him for being too finicky and eccentric, a man who has become a slave of his irritating habits and mannerisms, a superstitious, supercilious, silly man, who hears the sound of future even in his farts. People think he is obsessed with life, wasting his chance to live by worrying too much. They say he is like the fool who stays up all night trying to find out how he goes to sleep.

He wakes up every morning, blows his nose, opens his eyes and goes about the business of life. Two recurring dreams come to him from time to time. In one he swims in the water with floating stars. In another he sees himself drowning, listening to the uncanny echo of his own voice, crying for help.

Life is either a dream or a nightmare. Superstition is when one is obsessed with either.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.