If looks could kill.....Nazar

My youngest brother was born when I was nine years of age. Since my mother was a working woman, looking after the new born, bathing and dressing him up used to be my responsibility. He was a sweet child. Whenever somebody came home, admire his cuteness and leave, there used to be distinct difference in his behaviour. He would be cranky, cry for no reason, disturbed during sleep and sometimes feverish. And when I lift him, he would be so much heavier than usual. Same thing used to happen when we would visit somebody’s house or go for a function and come back home.  

‘Nazar’ or ‘Evil eye’ has a remedy.

My mother, on seeing the child’s changed behaviour, said it was due to ‘Nazar’ or ‘Drishti’ and she had a remedy. She would take three unbroken long red chillies, some sea salt, mustard seeds, and some onion peels in a piece of paper, wrap it up and take it in her right palm. She would touch this on the baby’s head on the left side, left shoulder, elbow, palm, left knee, toes, continuing onto right toes, knee, palm, elbow, shoulder and right side of the head. This she would do three times, then make three circles around his head and put the paper with its contents onto fire outside the house in our compound. For making the fire we used coconut husks and dried leaves.

The moment it burnt off, the baby would feel light and I would be relieved because I had to carry him. So as a child, I had experienced its effect.

Principle behind the Nazar

If we know the concept of auras, it is easy to understand what is Evil eye. Aura is the electromagnetic field around our physical body. When we look at objects or people with positive aura, it energises us and we feel happy. A negative aura can sap our energy and make us sad and unhappy. It is possible to draw energy from positive objects/people and lose energy to negative aura objects/people. An evil eye, on the other hand, can cause us to lose our aura, feel drained and disempowered.

When someone looks very pretty in a party, or is giving an outstanding performance, how many in the party or audience will be looking at that person with longing eyes, or with envy? Any of us can possess an evil eye transiently. This follows envy, or even adoration, of something beautiful, like a child. Sometimes even a mother’s gaze can drain the child of positive aura. It is to protect from this that a black dot is put prominently on the child’s face.

Across the world

Through the ages, people have always feared the evil eye. When children fall sick for no apparent reason, when things suddenly start to go wrong or when hindrances come your way repeatedly, people say, the evil eye has struck. 

Belief in the evil eye is strongest in West Asia, Latin America, East and West Africa, Central America, South Asia, Central Asia, and Europe, especially the Mediterranean region; it has also spread to areas, including northern Europe, particularly in the Celtic regions.

Authentic practices of warding off the evil eye are also commonly practiced by Muslims: rather than directly expressing appreciation of, for example, a child's beauty, it is customary to say Masha'Allah, that is, "God has willed it", or invoking God's blessings upon the object or person that is being admired.

A number of beliefs about the evil eye are also found in folk religion, typically revolving around the use of amulets or talismans as a means of protection. In the Aegean Region and other areas where light-colored eyes are relatively rare, people with green eyes, and especially blue eyes, are thought to bestow the curse, intentionally or unintentionally.

Assyrians are also strong believers in the evil eye. They will usually wear a blue/turquoise bead necklace to be protected from the evil eye.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook explained that the evil eye is "an example of how one soul may affect another through unseen connections between them. We are all influenced by our environment.... The evil eye is the venomous impact from malignant feelings of jealousy and envy of those around us."

In Mexico and Central America, infants are considered at special risk for the evil eye and are often given an amulet bracelet as protection, typically with an eye-like spot painted on the amulet.

Burning chillies

It is interesting that if we just burn a small chilli, we won’t be able to stand nearby as we start sneezing and coughing from the pungent fumes. But when three big chillies are burned to remove nazar, there will be absolutely no offensive smell, no sneezing and coughing.

When one is living in an apartment and can’t light a fire outside, we can line a kadai with aluminium foil, burn some shredded paper inside that and put the things to be burned in that. It is important to see that the chillies burn completely. When it cools down, the whole thing can be wrapped up in the foil and discarded.

A simpler method

If you don’t want to take so much trouble, just take one teaspoon of sea salt in your hand, take it clockwise around the head thrice, lightly spit on it thrice and discard it by flushing immediately in the sink. Salt attracts negative energy and breaks it down. So it is important to dispose the contaminated salt immediately.

Keep yourself protected

A simple way to keep yourself protected from evil eye is to always wear vibhooti in the third eye region.

Talismans that protect from Evil eye

Whereas the evil eye is a curse believed to be cast by a malevolent glare that can cause misfortune or injury, usually given to a person when they are unaware, talismans created to protect against the evil eye are also frequently called "evil eyes".

Attempts to ward off the curse of the evil eye have resulted in a number of talismans in many cultures. As a class, they are called "apotropaic" (Greek for "prophylactic" / or "protective", literally: "turns away") talismans, meaning that they turn away or turn back harm.

A blue or green eye can also be found on some forms of the Hamsa hand, an apotropaic hand-shaped talisman against the evil eye found in West Asia.

In Turkey, a typical Nazar (amulet) is made of handmade glass featuring concentric circles or teardrop shapes in dark blue, white, light blue and black, occasionally with a yellow/gold edge.

Assets and liabilities in life

We had attended a Swamiji’s (from Chinmaya mission) lectures in Manipal way back in 1981. The point that stuck in my mind was the difference between ‘Preya marg’ and ‘Shreya marg.’ Preya marg is doing things in life that gives immediate pleasure, but leads to agony later. For example smoking, over indulgence in sweets etc., Cigarette smoking gives real pleasure to many and in several instances it can lead to life threatening diseases like cancer. Eating too much sugary stuff can cause obesity, diabetes and heart problems.

On the other hand Shreya marg is doing things that don’t give immediate pleasure, but they do bring joy in the long run. Like exercising daily for keeping the body in shape and healthy. It may be raining and you feel like sleeping in the warm bed than to get up and go for jogging, but jogging is what you do if you are on Shreya marg.

Running blind in the rat race

The Universe provides nourishment and necessities for every being. But we humans think that we have to struggle hard to achieve things. I want to make it clear that I am not advocating inaction. As long as we are alive, we need to act, but if we do it in a balanced and nonattached way, we can enjoy every moment of life.

Neglecting one’s body and sleep, not giving time and attention to family, with the common argument “I am doing this to make our life secure, to give you better future’ (which are lame excuses anyway) will back fire in the long run.

When one looks around, everybody is in the rat race. It needs real spiritual foundation to step aside and lead a balanced life. Let us take a look at the assets one creates and how they transform into liabilities over time.

HUGE house, your ‘Status symbol’

There is a trend to make huge houses, with inbuilt home theatre and gym. After about two years of living in that house, it is seen that they hardly get time to watch movies in the home theatre and oversleeping is so enjoyable that the home gym is mostly unused. When it becomes difficult to get domestic help, the huge house turns into a liability as it is difficult to clean.

With the craze to send children abroad, we get to see large number of houses where only the parents (who are senior citizens) are living. They just lock up the rooms except their own bed room and kitchen. Prolonged closed spaces attract negative energies and the parents suffer from problems which the allopathy approach can’t diagnose.

There is the current fashion of false ceiling and intense lighting in the house. False ceiling creates dead spaces in the house, not a good thing for the inhabitants’ wellbeing. The lighting in the house is very strong, there is no balance of Yin and Yang. I feel uncomfortable in some of our friends’ houses as I am sensitive to the energy level around me. They stay in such a bright atmosphere till sleeping time, which is detrimental as after sunset presence of melatonin is supposed to induce sleep and bright lighting doesn’t facilitate melatonin synthesis. Then they take sleeping pills to drift into a drowsy slumber!

I have seen bath tubs in some houses accumulating dirt and becoming storage place for things like brooms. For the sake of status the bath tub was installed in the house but over time it is not used for baths and keeping it clean becomes a tough job.

So you can see how a huge house is turning from an asset into a liability.

Enormous bank accounts

 We all should have savings to meet emergency situations and for old age. But the trend to amass money beyond limit will bring liabilities. As one ages and memory starts fading, it is difficult to remember where all the money has been stacked! When the owner of such unlimited money develops parkinsonism, his signature is distorted and the bank refuses to accept and honour the cheque.

I know of families where the husbands didn’t have any time for family, working around the clock to swell bank accounts. The compromised health leads to their sudden death, and the wives have no knowledge about the different accounts. So the families are now economically suffering.

Accumulating vehicles

Vehicles used to be for transportation and convenience but now it is more a status symbol. If the neighbor is owning two cars like you, you should definitely buy the third one for the one up-manship, right? As one ages, keeping multiple vehicles in running condition and attending to their servicing schedules become a liability!

Unlimited wardrobe

The amount of clothes people amass today is appalling. It is always designer clothes for functions and a huge amount is spent on that. The current trend of using too much cloth for a dress is a burden to the mother Earth. Since the photos of functions are uploaded on facebook, there is no question of using the same dress again for another function. Once I asked a friend (I genuinely wanted to know the answer) what she does with all the designer clothes, because these  dresses, unlike what I do with my saris and simple dresses, can’t be handed down to the maids. She told with a painful expression, “That is the problem Beena, they are just dumped in cardboard boxes and kept in the house. That is when I noticed the cardboard boxes in several corners of the house. You need to know that her house is a huge one.

Is it worth?

One needs to really consider if it is worth sacrificing today’s joys to perceived ‘security of tomorrow’. What you lose in terms of health and relationships in the rat race can’t be retrieved with all the money that you have accumulated.