Don't die on a Tuesday !!

Each day here in India is a learning experience .... It is also such an exhausting experience but some of the things you hear just make you stop and say 'are you serious ??'

Today I caught a lift with another mum to the a class lunch in the city. Her profession back in Sweden is a nurse and she has been offered the chance to work in a hospice here in Bangalore a day a week. She thought it might be a good opportunity but was concerned about the differences in processes and policies with patients that are terminally sick. In Sweden she works with terminally ill children, so is very used to incredibly sad stories but it's also very different here.

One of the things that she was told was that there were days that the patients were 'best not to die' - are you serious ??  Apparently Tuesday's are a particularly bad day to die and so the gravely ill patients are 'kept alive' until Wednesday.  Thursday is also not good but Tuesday is desperately bad.  They believe that if you die on a Tuesday, that this bad luck will be passed to future generations.

So we asked Sara's driver the background and he said that some Hindus believe that Tuesday is not a good day to buy a new house, get a new job, commence a journey, many men won't shave, or buy new things.  Obviously this is unavoidable in our current lives but it is still a belief that if you have a choice to move something to another day - you should.

So, I investigated a bit further and another thought is that Tuesday is considered an inauspicious day because, it begins at the highest influence point of the planet Mars and, Mars and Saturn are considered evil planets.  Who knows..... many people think this is ridiculous but there are also a large number of Hindus who would not 'follow' these beliefs.

I am constantly amazed at the thing I learn here.