~ When the Path Crossed~

Living in our mental silos, we often brand and limit ourselves to precedents which make a mockery of our living. What makes good use of our commonsense is hardly followed and all the pre-historic notions are driven in our minds.

Doing my evening walk, I came across an unusual precedence when I observed a gesture of a young lady in her mid-20’s. She was brisk walking in all comfort but suddenly she stopped and turned back and start walking in complete opposite direction. Seeing her doing this, my eye caught the reason of her behavior and it came out to be a ‘Black Cat’ which had suddenly crossed her path – the poor creature seems to be anonymously talking a stroll in her ambience, oblivious to the ‘humans’ who could mind her crossing the aisle and going to the other side of the park.

Suddenly a gush of imaginary thoughts came to my fore. Why did she behave the way she did? What was she taught of such a beautiful animal which is petted with so much care in many parts of India and the world? Her conduct was synonymous with her knowledge about the kitty and quite obviously the legend stories she might have heard from her grandpa which would have put a deep fear on her psychology about a Black Cat’s sudden spurt of crossing the path – which according to legend bestows an ominous sign of miss happening coming our way.

Quite amazingly, I started to grimace on the situation to which I was a cool witness, I was the next one to cross the path and suddenly I became the first as she had backtracked! I did it with quite an ease and more of pride and brought to rest the mental turmoil which the situation had put me to 😊 – Today, I did it with all my honour and removed the shackles of my mind towards such a unparalleled moment.

What is the use of education and commonality when we can’t give due credit and an explicit living to animals around us – we categorize them into gloomy signs of miss happenings that force us to believe in the power of malevolent. When in night the dog’s howl, our minds are retracted to something unpleasant and we start to believe in a soon to happen misfortune.

Are we really living in 21^st century with such dogmas of our mind and percepts? The cat must have felt pride for a moment that humans didn’t make her run out of danger that they showcase and her crossing the path in an untimely fashion had actually made them turn away!

She made her style statement with ease and went into the bushes undeterred by human presence – but not before making me think about many of us  and  our reaction to such an incident, had this happened to us, do you still have crossed the path with no thoughts or you had taken this as a smooth gesture with a ‘benefit of doubt’ moment about the kitty as she has an equal right to take a night stroll as many of us… the eternal debate continues…