Superstitious People rather give up their Job than their Superstition

Last week I told you that Apra had got chicken pox – by now, she is nearly back to normal, just a few of the red spots are still itching and most of them are nearly healed already. Amazing what a child's immune system can do! I wanted to tell you about the other people at the Ashram who had chicken pox, too, and the interesting problem that we had due to this disease.

It is quite normal for a family with a small child to have chicken pox at home once in their life. It is probably nearly unavoidable for children who go to kindergarten or school to contract this disease at some point. Schools are like breeding points where the virus enjoys the close contact to so many people. It jumps from one to the other before you even know it. This is how, once Pranshu was done with his treatment, Pawan and Jay Singh were lying in bed with fever and chicken pox all over the body. In that time, we did our greatest efforts to keep Apra away and even isolated them as far as possible so that nobody else of the large Ashram family would get infected.

We were not successful however, as you already know, and I think this virus is quite sneaky, too, as it only ever showed itself on the next person when the previous one already seemed to be healed. However it did it, I don’t know but it also infected not only our baby girl but also two of our employees, 25 and 35 years old.

We did what most people in the west would see as the logical consequence for seeing someone with red itching blisters all over his body and a fever that makes him shiver from top to toe: we sent them to see a doctor. We paid their doctor’s fees and their medicines – after all we wanted them to get fine again and the rest of their co-workers to stay healthy.

They were living at our Ashram, like a big part of our staff, and they had phoned and told their family about their illness. The next day, members of their families showed up at the Ashram, requesting to speak with us. We were told that these two men should not take their medicine but that ceremonies had to be performed instead. It was, in their opinion, the anger of the goddess that showed itself in these blisters. Only devotion and offerings would fix that.

It is a normal, crazy superstition here in India that there is no cure to chicken pox. I wrote about this before, in 2010, and there is unfortunately still no change to be seen. People think there is no cure, it will vanish by itself and nothing should be done. On the contrary – if you take medicine or put ointment on the chicken pox, you can further anger the goddess because you refuse to take her punishment!

We showed our staff members the children who had recovered within a week with the help of the doctor – but they did not accept any such argument. The expensive medicine was thrown away and they left the Ashram with their families. When leaving the gate, they asked whether they could come back after getting cured but we denied. They were ready to give up their job but not to eat medicine.

Having shared this story online on social networks while it was happening, I received a lot of different, interesting and also disturbing feedback which I want to share with you tomorrow.