It’s a good practice to keep an open mind about things. But sometimes you just can’t help but have a facepalm moment when seemingly intelligent educated people do things which make absolutely no sense. Like the whole don’t wear black on auspicious occasions thing. As someone who practically lives in black, this one in particular, is especially infuriating. Do you have any idea how many gorgeous black sarees I’ve got eating dust in my closet, mausi ji?
While this is relatively lower in the “are you kidding me?” scale, some superstitions just leave you speechless. You can’t help but wonder if common sense and logical thinking really are that scarce.
Take this phenomenon that’s been happening in Lucknow for example. People are willingly spending time behind bars to make up for “jail yog” in their kundalis.
While some people flee the country in an attempt to escape jail time, in UP some are taking the “prevention is better than cure,” part a bit too seriously.
According to the Times of India, superstitions surrounding kundalis have taken an interesting turn with some believing that spending time in jail willingly now would avoid jail time in the future.
A businessman from Gomtinagar, 38-year-old Ramesh Singh spent a good 24 hours in jail in May. This is what he has to say:
“After going through my ‘kundali’, our family astrologer revealed that I have a ‘jail yog’ which would land me in trouble in the future. Everyone in the family got scared. The astrologer then suggested that if I spend some time in jail without any fault, the threat would end.”
Ummm… How do you even respond to this?
And the funnier bit is that when he submitted an application before the district administration with a copy of his kundali, they actually gave the go-ahead to him! The ever so helpful astrologer then adviced him to follow all the rules for undertrials during his stay in the lockup, including eating the jail food.
Singh continues:
“I pray to God to pardon any sin and help me stay on the right path so that I never commit any crime.”
You know, I could be big time wrong here, but I think avoiding any shady unlawful business pretty much guarantees that you never see the inside of a lockup anyways. Doesn’t it?
As for the district administration, they are all about being accommodating to such requests. Lucknow DM Kaushal Raj Sharma reveals that they receive approximately 24 such requests every year where the applicants seeking permission to spend 24-48 hours in jail.
Another district administration authority explains it as such:
Well, that’s a very productive use of their time, isn’t it? Someone please get me a rocket to Pluto!
Ankit Chaturvedi is another such believer who spent some quality jail time in January this year.
And he has some insightful takeaways from his experience there. He shares:
“I learned an important lesson on life in lock-up. Survival is possible even with the bare minimum. I slept on the floor, drank water that I would otherwise have not used, ate a meal I would not even have looked at and counted every breath to complete my 24 hours.”
And it’s not just one astrologer who’s prescribing this quirky remedy. This seems to quite a popular thing among the astrologer community.
Bipin Pandey from Lucknow University’s Astrology department explains it like this:
I mean, come on! While I don’t intend to mock the astrological sciences since I have next to no knowledge about this mystical craft, this is maybe taking it too far. It’s like attempting reverse psychology on your kundali. “You say I might go to jail in the future? Guess what? I beat you to it. Ha!”
*infinite facepalms