Desi parents fill up their children’s minds with more myths rather than a fact or phenomena. Parents tell these misapprehensions to children representing them as actual stories because their parents told them but some are famous too. They have become a part of our norms and values. Popular superstitions that desi parents tell their children have no scientific proof of consequence that are linked to particular events so these type of beliefs are called myths. They have nothing to do with religion or wisdom but are rather for entertainment.
Parents say do not watch much television, or else your eye-sight will get weak at an early age. Although eyes get weak due to the UV rays but technology, existing or fourth coming does not radiate such rays.
Telling lies enlarges your nose. How can features transform when we are born with them? So how can a lie make a nose longer? Funny though!
‘The one who says is the one who is.’ This reminds me of my childhood. This myth is the most famous so if anyone calls me lazy, this should go for them too, right?
Shoes lying upside down are abusing the sky. How is this even possible? Shoes can’t talk.
Further, elders say that if someone is sleeping and your cross over him/her, their height doesn’t grow.
If you sneeze, someone is remembering you or missing you immensely. In fact, in today’s time, no one is free to even give you a birthday wish or call to at 12am sharp.
“The one who says is the one who is.” This reminds me of my childhood. This myth is the most famous so if anyone calls me lazy, this goes for them too.
The funniest one I found out was ‘speaking a lie makes tongue black’. No it doesn’t, but still better not lie or your face would, one day and ‘fair n lovely’ won’t work anymore.
It is also told that if we wander off a boogie man will kill you and make sausages out of you! Oh my God! Yummy they be then.
Putting a tooth in a plastic bag and sliding under a pillow for a tooth fairy but in fact when parents forget to put money under a pillow then dad might say, ‘you shouldn’t have put a tooth in a bag because the fairy couldn’t smell it’.
The final illusion that was told to most of us, 90’s kids is, ‘when you will grow and be parents then you’ll remember everything you said’. Using these statements for future actually tickles ones funny bone.
In nutshell, these are uproarious but messed up too. So myths are heroic struggle to compare the truth in the world. In fact in a lot of ways that unconditional love is a myth too but my parents are the only reason I know it is a real thing.
The writer is a Mass Communication student at Forman Christian College and can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, March 4th 2019.