Harking Back: Lahore’s world of bewildering beliefs and superstitions

Almost every country in this world has varying degrees of beliefs and superstitions. Lahore is no exception. If you roam the lanes and streets of the old city, evidence of this is everywhere. In a way it is engrained in all of us.

Recently while going through the works of Amir Khusrau’s ‘Kulliyat’, it was amazing how he loves Basant, and describes it as the “final depiction of optimism” of the people of Lahore. Today that ‘optimism’ stands banned. He also dwells on the beliefs and superstitions of the subcontinent. As a journalist who has virtually roamed every street and lane of the old walled city, it made great sense to explore this aspect of life, for what he said still holds true.

The degrees of superstitions vary and are complex. I remember when my daughters would hurt themselves in even a minor fall or get sick, their Kashmiri ‘Nani Appu’ would rush to the kitchen, get seven red chillies, treat them on fire and then spin it around the child’s head seven times and throw them into the fire. My English mother on hearing this would say: “Oh No, not again”.

Though both grandmothers could not speak the language of the other, yet they were the very best of friends. ‘Mummy’ and ‘Nani Appu’ would share their personal woes for hours with each other, nodding their head in pity. We used to laugh at the seriousness of the conversations, but I am sure they got the essence of each other’s problem.

In my walks in old Lahore, initially with my father, and then as a journalist trying to enjoy the essence of the history of the city, I made friends with a lot of ‘faqirs’ and ‘sadhus’ and ‘sufis’ and ‘malangs’ and even ‘jadoogars’. Let me in this piece narrate a few incidents. My favourite by all accounts was the late Sheikh Mubarak Ali. His shop was at Tehsil Bazaar, and he had won a case against a rich business family to build a mosque on their property. Most people believed the judge must have had a ‘spell’ cast on him.

His order was that when I visit, it must be tea first and then any talk. I sat watching people rushing in with their problems. Once a lady was complaining about her wayward husband. He caught her thumb, read a ‘holy spell’ silently, and before my eyes the lady fell unconscious. When she recovered he blew on her a few times and commanded: “Get lost, and live and serve your husband”. She left happily. I have always wondered just how long the spell lasted. The belief is that if the burnt chillies could not be smelt, the diagnosis was correct.

Once a young highly-educated lady heard these stories and visited Sheikh Sahib. I was present there. He did the same but she did not faint. Probably sat analysing what was going on. He told her to leave and told me to tell her the next day. Once she had left he said: “She is crazy, she will marry a fraud who will steal all her jewellery, then they will divorce, but the trickster will manage to get back in her good books, and she will then leave this world after 1,111 days”.

Gosh, that was too much to tell the lady. But I did exactly as instructed. Ironically, this is exactly what unfolded for the young educated lady. The signs and signals of young girls wanting to marry hold a ready market for these ‘fortune-tellers’. Just how they find and locate these ‘voodoo chaps’ - as I call them - has always intrigued me.

Once at Sheikh Mubarak’s place he told me about a client who rushed to him from nearby to inform of his mother’s death. He closed his eyes and said that at the graveyard she will wake up, only to die within minutes. He told me that this is exactly what happened. I lumped the story with difficulty, but you never know.

Once while teaching the ‘History of Lahore’ at LUMS, we had a well-known professor visiting from Cambridge. She had a lump in her brain and asked me to find a ‘fakir’ to get rid of it. Just how could a highly-educated serving Cambridge professor want such treatment when she was already being treated at the famed Addenbrooke’s Hospital? I was pressurised by other teachers to find a ‘powerful’ medium.

So I rang up Sufi Sahib in Bhera. Even before I could tell him what the issue was he said abruptly: “Tell the lady to go home, no ‘fakir’ can help her. She will live till the age of 71 years. Allah will help her even though she does not believe in the Almighty”. That lady is still fine though the university has sent her on forcible medical retirement. Let’s see what unfolds.

One widely-held superstition that still exists in almost everyone is that if a child sneezes, or falls ill, the belief is that an ‘evil eye’ is the reason. Most people in England also believe in this ‘voodoo’ version. People then carry out various treatments from the famous ‘seven chillies in fire’, to food for the poor, to a simple prayer and even throwing away a sacrificed chicken in a graveyard. The variety of ‘treatments’ is amazing, and let it be clear ‘ancient’ and lives in our subconscious.

In the villages around Lahore the unlucky sign for a farmer is, amazingly, to meet a priest early in the morning. I researched this one and found that in Daudi’s ‘Tarikh-e-Daudi’ that from ancient times a Hindu farmer meeting a Brahmin early in the morning meant that he would have to go home, have a quick bath and return to work.

Each example is stunning. Like the crow making a noise is unlucky, or that in Indian Punjab girls use a snake-like design on their foreheads to keep the mother-in-law at bay. In our rural Punjab to work on the 3rd, 8th, 13th, 23rd and 28th was once considered unlucky. A researcher in Cambridge tells me it is the same in England. “Just why?” I asked. “Well, on these lunar days the earth sleeps”. Gosh, never knew that one.

What one did know was that there are lucky days to harvest, or marry. The list is endless and this column is too short to go into every one. So I will be back to the wise words of the late Sheikh Mubarak Ali. Once I asked him what will happen to his ‘dera’ (shop) once he is no more. “Oh, my fraud son will continue till Allah’s wrath for his sins will take him away. Then other frauds will try and each will end their own lives”.

That was a dangerous prediction. So just last year I visited his shop and found it locked. The tea shop man opposite his shop told me that within a year or two each of the five men who followed died in mysterious circumstances.

But then the tea man added: “Sheikh Sahib ordered me to give you tea whenever you came”. So I sipped my tea in silence, wondered at the world of make-belief, and went my way. He refused to charge me. So it is that the world of superstitions and beliefs continues, mostly self-constructed.