Bewitched

I have always been fascinated by the occult. I do not practice any of it but I do recognize that it exists. Since India is well known for its diversity and variety in terms of paranormal, here it is considered just another activity. While the most I ever do is read about it, I do know many normal family-oriented people who practice it. It is not considered evil or black (in a bad sense) here and herein lies one of the differences between the East and the West. These people would be considered pretty satanic in the west but here practicing the dark arts is just another way of experiencing the beyond. Generally people are considered to be good or evil here individually not the powers they choose to believe in.
I grew up in a relatively rural environment here and one of my clearest memory from childhood is my grandmother taking me aside conspiratorially, showing me a woman passing through on our street and telling me to stay away from her because she was a witch. How did she know that woman was a witch? Her feet were turned around one eighty degrees and she walked with a jump in her step because her toes were behind her all the time. I don’t recall ever seeing her feet but it did scare the crap out of me since I knew, even then, that witches needed the liver and the heart of children to practice their kind of magic. All the kids on my street knew. And we avoided that ‘witch’ like the plague.
There are literally hundreds of different dark arts here and each one claims to grant its followers the usual extension of life and freedom from disease and discomfort.
But since this isn’t such a hot career move in these days of computers and the internet, the number of these people is declining. While earlier these people were respected, often out of fear of what they could do to someone, these days higher standards of education discourage that.
You still hear the stories. From fantastic tales of supernatural battles to finding lost keys through divination. These arts are an integral part of life in India. I cannot say how many of these are true. I have seen some weird things in my life but just because I can’t explain them, I would not attribute them to paranormal forces. Instead, I just keep an open mind and because of that, I am frightened by some of the things I witness while I laugh away some of the others I know to be hoaxes. Its interesting that none of the symbols of faith from the west people use for protection against evil work here. Most of them are not even known except to the English speaking people in larger cities. The ones that are known are more for aesthetic appearance than any functional protection.
One thing I have found to be true is this. If you don’t mess with them, they don’t mess with you. Your particular religion or worship isn’t important and most of the religions here do have their fair share of supernatural. Even the ones which have come from the west pretty much conform to similar systems of belief as far as black magic is concerned. But here it is just magic, its practitioner may choose to be black or white, good or evil.
So if you are here and encounter an ‘apparition’ chasing you, running hard and long is generally considered to be your best chance of escape.