Superstition – Bombay, India

If you sleep with your bed facing a mirror at night it’s considered bad luck because all the bad that you’ve done reflects back on you.

This was one of the many superstitions that Tanvi had learned as a young girl growing up in Bombay, India. She said she was about five or six years old when her parents told her this. This can be considered a superstition because she was engaging in a superstitious act, or the lack thereof, and it can also be considered folk belief because it has not been scientifically proven. She explained that the belief was that the bad things that a person has done that day or just in life in general may bounce from the mirror back to the person. This would cause more bad things to happen to the person.

She has also learned many other beliefs very similar to this one growing up. Several examples are: do not touch feet to books without asking for forgiveness or do not leave the house for a journey without consuming a mixture of yogurt and sugar or else something bad is going to happen. Tanvi’s parents strictly followed these beliefs in order to generate as much good luck as possible. Good luck and good karma are important aspects of life to her family and generally in India as well. Whether Tanvi believes this or not is irrelevant and unimportant because her parents force her to participate in these folk beliefs.  Therefore, they have become a normal part of her life and she follows most of these beliefs automatically now.