As I took a right turn at Abdul Kalam statue on my favourite jolking road in DRDO, I saw a fairly fat cat jumping over the fence on my right side and dashing across the road to my left.
Walking just ahead of me was a lady in her late forties. Her overall appearance indicated that she could be a housemaid working in the DRDO colony.
As soon as she saw the cat crossing the road, she suddenly stopped. The cat crossing one’s path is considered to be inauspicious by many. It is supposed to create problems in the work that person is going to attend. Those who believe this, do either of the following to nullify this bad omen. One, they retrace few steps and then go ahead again. Or two, and better still, they wait for someone else to cross the road before them. In this way that someone takes up the bad luck and nullify theirs.
As that lady looked around to decide what to do, she saw me and quickly chose the option number two. Her face however showed a mixture of emotions. A sly smart smile that she got a “sacrificial goat’ in me and tinge of guilt that she was cheating on me. She lingered there, fumbling her hand inside the purse as if to show that she had stopped to search for something and looking stealthily at me with half guilt, half smugness. I was simultaneously filled with the strange sense of amusement and pity for her. I gave her friendly smile and with a wave of my hand said reassuringly,
