Call me superstitious
Once upon a time there was a blanket on the bed. Its allotted space has progressively shrunk until now, five nights later, it has finally been unceremoniously dropped in the furthest-from-my-bed corner I could find. I’m afraid though that the epilogue of this story will still end up in a 1:0 victory. For the blanket, that is.
As I’m writing, I have a tulsi mala necklace wrapped around my wrist. My friend Karolina has it on good authority (her Indian sister-in-law who is a yoga practitioner and a Vedic astrologist) that an activated tulsi mala necklace can protect you from black magic and energy vampires. That apparently abound in Rishikesh.
Tulsi is the Indian holy basil. Holy because it’s a plant sacred to Lord Krishna. Without getting into religion and lore, tulsi also has a host of other wonderful health properties, including protecting your organs against chemical and physical stress.
Photo by Avinash Sharma on Unsplash
I don’t know about black magic practitioners and energy vampires, but I do know that there is something wrong in my room. In particular with that blanket.
In most of the budget guesthouses here in India it is customary to change the bed linens but have consecutive guests make do with the same blanket. A sort of reddish fleece thing with purple and deep green patterns that you see everywhere, with mild variations, in the north. From Rishikesh to Dharamshala and Rajasthan. Looking at these specific patterns and colours really brings to life the thread between the Romani people you meet in Europe and their distant Indian ancestors.
Until now I’ve always pinched my nose, mostly figuratively speaking, and decided to adapt in order to save those 5-10 Euros each night. Leaving aside considerations on the value (or hygiene in this case) for money of this choice, with a bit of mental adjustment it’s a feasible approach. So when I checked into my new accommodation, I thought it was going to be another episode of the same, albeit with a blanket that seemed to have seen a higher share of vicissitudes than his cousins. Unexpectedly, on that first night, when I pulled up the blanket to go to bed, I felt icky. Like something was mysteriously wrong. I felt ridiculous though. “Mysteriously wrong”, what’s that even supposed to mean? In the end I convinced myself that I was imagining things and I should stop being fussy. On night 1 I slept with the blanket covering up to my hips and a big wool scarf covering my upper body. On night 2, I wore socks and the blanket was just covering my ankles. On night 3 I was still wearing socks but the blanket was rolled down as far as I could at the end of the bed.
Over the course of those nights, there was a fight going on inside myself. Between the rational woman steeped in economics, numbers and centuries of cultural positivism, and the sensitive, maybe impressionable, witchy self that believes that the world is made of magic and we don’t necessarily have scientific proof for things that, however, are true.
Most spiritual and religious traditions believe that spaces and objects hold the energetic footprints of their previous occupants or owners. Which gave rise to a plethora of purification rituals and to that sense of sacredness when we enter certain places of worship.
Be it self-suggestion or a real negative energy footprint left by previous occupants of that room, fact is that I slept terribly. And being so bone-deep tired just wasn’t conducive to taking advantage of everything Rishikesh has to offer.
I started jokingly telling my friends that I was going to move out of that room because there was some negative energy in the blanket. Thankfully Rishikesh is a place where you hear much crazier talk so my statements didn’t raise any eyebrows. But I was still sneakily judging myself for really believing in such negative energies. So I reached out to Anna, who I met a week prior and had taken the room before me, to ask her if she felt the same in that room. I might still be a fool, but foolishness loves company. This is what she answered “For the room, I join your feeling. […] I felt very lonely there but in a strange way, I was stuck in that feeling. It changed the minute I left”. After I received her reply, I only have two thoughts. “Aha, it’s not only me!” and “Why do I even need external validation for trusting my instincts about a place or a situation?”.
Coming from a Western rational positivism culture, we are imbued with a “grit your teeth and power through” philosophical attitude and our first reaction is to discount feelings and emotions, rationalise them until they are broken up in bite-size chunks that we try to stuff down our throat, leaving them as indigestible as they were before.
On the contrary, we should probably decide to take a stand for a deeper part of ourselves that has a wise beyond-years inner knowing. An intelligence beyond what we usually consider to be our intelligence, which covers such a limited logical-mathematical range of expressions. This other, older intelligence is always with us, observing life happening around us and whispering gently in our ears to guide us safely through any experience. Unfortunately we in the West have a long history of rudely quieting these whispers, until we become so deaf that she stops talking altogether. This effort to open our ears and mind to these whispers goes well beyond any disquisition regarding the existence or not of possessed blankets and ghostly presences.
This past night I’ve slept better. Thanks to smoking the room with palo santo or its placebo effect, who cares. Tomorrow I will be moving out of my accommodation, paying an additional 10 Euros per night to stay in a more convenient part of town, in a place that feels more light and fresh and open. My story had no talking animals and also minimal presence of ghosts, but as with all fables it should have a final morale. I believe it should be this:
Instead of spending so much time and energy talking yourself out of your gut feelings, make sure to get back on speaking terms with your instinctual side. And just follow what it tells you! You will ultimately waste much less time, energy…and sleep.
