Lahore
April 18, 2006
Yesterday we had another encounter with the ubiquitous house lizard, called a chipkaly. Pakistanis, and I am no exception, are trained since childhood to harbor an irrational dislike of this harmless creature. It is quite interesting to see my son, who has had little contact with these omnipresent reptiles until our move to Pakistan, wanting to pet and hold a chipkaly while my wife and I are doing our best to get the hideous creature exterminated. We, the Pakistanis really detest this reclusive creature to strange and rather comical extent as the story below illustrates.
I had stepped out of the house when my wife discovered the reptile’s hiding place and promptly summoned the boy Riaz, who does our odd jobs, to make the problem go away. Riaz, being no less Pakistani than my shrieking wife, was rather edgy as well, and so started a long and epic duel, where any movement by the terrified reptile was magnified in spirit and substance by Riaz while my wife carried out a high pitched commentary on the gladiatorial contest. Anyway, when the wounded chipkaly was finally flicked out of the house by Riaz’s lunge with the jharoo (his fencing abilities coming to the fore), all parties calmed down and Riaz told us that the chipkalies are deadly poisonous. If they touch your skin, you are in trouble (don’t cringe, I have touched a chipkaly and have lived to tell the tale). More so, if you are married and childless, as is Riaz, and you kill a chipkaly, you have pretty much had it. First your first born will be daughter – poor you, and then even that daughter may not be totally normal. Riaz was a little reluctant to part with cherished family wisdom, so I missed out on the details. I listened to Riaz with a smile on my face, feeling superior with my disdain for superstitions. Riaz is not very literate, I thought, and that accounts for his belief in such blatant departure from rational thinking. A thought that I regretted afterwards.
It’s all about causality – every effect must have a cause, we learn in physics. A superstition links an effect to a cause, where that link cannot be established empirically or theoretically. Under rules strictly enforced in modern science, the lack of proof in establishing that link between cause and effect makes the hypothesis invalid. But, philosophically speaking, why should that always be the case? After all, the words belief, faith and religion are conceptually identical to superstition (sans the negative connotations), yet almost all human beings rely on some beliefs where the cause and effect relationship is tenuous at best. During my own flirtations with the rationalists (mu’tazila) in Islam, I came to the conclusion that strict adherence to causality robs a human of all spirituality and subtleties of life, leaving him (or her) barren and devoid of all that is quintessentially human.
Riaz and I certainly don’t share the same belief set. So, should I ridicule Riaz, like the Danes ridiculed the Muslims, just because Riaz and I have different belief sets? The answer is an emphatic no. We both have a right to proselytize our beliefs but have an equal obligation to respect the other’s irrational, causality defying faith. One man’s superstition is the other’s religion.
