Some superstitions stick — not as beliefs, but as ribbons tethered to home.
I imagine them trailing behind me as I move through the world, fraying at the ends, catching on doorknobs and strangers’ conversations. They are quiet things: don’t sweep after sunset, don’t cut your nails at night, never sit on a pillow. Not commandments, not quite habits — but stories spoken in whispers, folded into the fabric of my childhood like pockets of sweet sugared coconut in a soft bhapa pitha.
I never quite believed them. And yet, I never quite let them go. These superstitions are not relics of irrational belief; they are emotional, political, and cultural inheritances — shaped by love, fear, and survival.
Gaibandha – that’s the name of my mother’s home. A city in Northern Bangladesh with dreamy villages, resorts, and malls. A quick drive away you will reach Bamondanga; a village where tall trees meet traintracks, krishnochura trees drip soft orange and yellow blossoms over quiet ponds, where the clouds settle onto the streets and homes like a blanket in the winter. It is here, in a beautiful home where my grandmother lives.
My family would visit in the winter.
Over a cup of tea, my little sister and I would beg my grandmother to tell us scary stories. Stories of shakchunnis, rakhosshs, petnis, and old women draped in white carrying a lamp, sweeping your porch in the early morning hours, passing through locked gates like mist. My sister and I huddled together, both in fear, and in search of warmth. I would scooch onto a pillow and my mother would say “Audhora moni, don’t sit on a pillow! You’ll get pimples on your butt!” She said that every time, and I would remember and forget.
But to this day I avoid sitting on pillows. Not because I think it’s true, but because my mother said it, and I miss her.
My father is 74 years old. Back when he was studying for his undergraduate degree, he moved to Dhaka to attend Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. In March of 1971, he visited his family home in Comilla, a bustling, wonderful village down south. Now, I know it to be festive, full of loving, cheeky characters, dance music thrumming in my ears till 3am, marijuana bought and sold freely around the majar. Back then… well, I don’t think my language will do it justice, that description resides safely in my father’s soul.
After a full dinner, he said goodbye to his parents and young siblings, and set off. Just as he crossed the threshold, his mother called him back. “Khalid! Don’t go tonight, wait till tomorrow!”
That night, the Pakistan army conducted Operation Searchlight, massacring students and professors in their dorms across all universities in Dhaka.
She saved him. Mother’s instinct. But it is more than that, it is borne of a superstition I still practice. Never call someone from behind as they leave, for if you do, they should hang back for a while.
As a child, I would wait till my father would come home from work, hiding behind the door. As soon as he would ring the bell, I’d open the door without showing myself, and hide behind it. He would roam around the house saying “where is Audhora? Where’d she go?” I’d giggle and wait till I heard his footsteps come towards the door once again. At that point I’d be running through an adrenaline rush.
“There you are!”
I’d jump up to hug him as he softly closed the door, laughing gleefully. This would be our routine every day.
But when he would leave, sometimes I would call after him, “Baba!”
He would turn back and stay with me and explain that he doesn’t like it when I call after him. That if I do that, he’d have to stay and be a little late. That it could mean that a bad thing would happen. It is a cultural superstition, as much as it is a deep, painful memory.
Historical fear embeds itself into intimate habits, becoming acts of emotional shielding during violent uncertainties. Reflections of their time of origin, carried into the present through blood and remembrance. It has become instruction cloaked in superstition. These are no longer beliefs but profound psychological responses — conditioned behaviors that haunt or comfort. Becoming muscle memory.
In Bangla, there is a word, ‘pichutan’. It describes a feeling that is beyond nostalgia: a pull into the past, feeling so enmeshed with your memories as though they are engravings in your bones. That is what these little superstitions are for me. So I tug that ribbon, performing a dance with my ancestors, my family, and my childhood self. It is not what I believe, it is what I refuse to forget.
