Nationality: Indian (Tamilnadu)
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Sunnyvale, CA
Performance Date: 4/22/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Tamil
- Main Piece: It is said that you should not cut your hair or nails on Fridays
- Informant Background:
- Why: Because Lakshmi (goddess of wealth) comes to your house on Fridays, and if you’ve cut your hair or nails, you’re unclean and Lakshmi won’t visit you if you’re unclean.
- Where did you learn it: My mother
- What does it mean to you: This is a superstition that doesn’t hold much meaning to me. My parents both grew up blindly following it and they similarly passed it on to me and expect me to blindly follow it as well. It means a lot more to my grandparents, who have a more firm belief in such such superstitions. Since it doesn’t require much effort to abide by, I don’t find it difficult to just simply follow it.
- My Thoughts
- There are many superstitions that people blindly believe in without really knowing the backing behind the story. For example, people blindly follow the belief that spilling salt is bad luck – however the root of this was the high value of salt centuries ago (equaling the value of gold). Once a belief is put into practice naturally, the reason for the practice becomes irrelevant – it becomes habitual to follow. Such habits that have a superstitious belief is very commonly handed down from parents to kids. There are many folk beliefs that follow the same sense of blindly following.
Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2015
Primary Language: English
- Main Piece
- Original Script: आज करे जो कल करे कल करे जो परसों इतनी जल्दी क्या है भैया प्रहार जीना है बरसो
- Phonetic Script: “aaj kare so kal kare, kal kare so parso, itni jaldi kya hai bhaiyya jab jeena hai barso”
- Transliteration: “Today do what tomorrow do, tomorrow do what day after tomorrow, this much rush what is brother when living is tomorrow”
- Translation: “What is to be done today, do tomorrow, what is to be done tomorrow, do the day after. What is the rush, brother, when you have to live the day after regardless?”
- Informant Background
- My mother used to tell me this as a joke when growing up. Whenever I was too stressed out about work, and she was in a good mood, she would say.
- Context of Performance
- Usually a joke in response to an individual who is in a rush.
- My thoughts
- I choose this piece in particular to comment on because I thought it was cool that there is a comedic response to the “procrastination proverb” that comes from a different state in the country. I came across this proverb after showing a friend of mine my Folklore Collection. She saw the proverb “Kal Karo so aaj kar, aaj karo so abh” and she laughed and said she knew one that was “a spin off” of it. While the other proverb was teaching to do whatever work is impending as soon as possible, this proverb is, what I believe, to be a direct response to that proverb – responding by basically saying “why should I bother doing work now, when I can do it tomorrow?” It’s already baffling to to think that a proverb spread so vastly: from a Swami that was born over 600 years ago, and spoke over 1000 miles away from the tiny, ~80 person village. The saying must have become used to commonly that a witty response was created and handed around possibly just as prominently as the words of a swami. A family descending from a state different that my mothers to have handed down a saying that is in direct response to a saying that my mother gave me. This saying managed to transcend language barriers and cultural differences, which is quite impressive in India, where these barriers are so strong.
