Two Mynahs or One!

It was my final exams in school. I had studied everything but my anxiety was at its peak since this exam would decide my future. What if maximum questions come from the part I missed or didn’t put much efforts? What if I couldn’t complete all the questions on time? What if the questions were out of syllabus? What if I felt sick during the exams? What if my pens didn’t work? What if this…what if that etc etc. All these questions hovered over my mind like black clouds as I sat glued to my book trying to revise one last chapter sitting in the window seat of my school bus.

Everything was in control until I decided to take a breath of fresh air and look outside the window. And lo! I saw a single lonely mynah sitting on the wire connecting two lamp posts. The book fell off my hands and I literally shouted out. Oh no! One mynah! All my friends in the bus looked at me and a few made the mistake of following my gaze and looking out of the window. Seeing one Mynah was considered inauspicious. 2 Mynahs were considered lucky and I had the bad luck of seeing it before an important exam and dragged some of the ‘unlucky’ friends too into this bad fate.

In the next 15 minutes of our journey to school, me and all my friends got busy in spotting the other counterpart Mynah by popping our heads out of the window and watching each tree, lamppost, buildings and fields that passed by. I don’t remember if we actually spotted another Mynah or believed that a particular bird we saw far away perched on a tree as Mynah, calculated 1+1=2 Mynahs and felt relieved. An age old superstition took control over us and all last minute revision was forgotten. If my exams hadn’t gone well then the Mynahs had to take the blame.

Superstitions stems from insecurities. Sighting a single Mynah on a normal day wouldn’t have caused so much stress and confusions. All the hullaballoo erupted because the day was crucial. The superstitions are an excuse to blame some factor when things go wrong. Sometimes they become big support systems also when a person is in distress mentally or physically. A lucky ring, a lucky T shirt, a lucky color boost up the confidence and make life easier to handle.