Can an agnostic be superstitious? What has atheism got to do with superstition? How much does collective memory affect a person? How important is a person’s upbringing in molding one’s beliefs? Or is it one’s individual choice. What
I do not know. All I can tell you is my strange behaviour.
It was a normal day. I was returning home in the office cab. It drops me midway to my home everyday, at Chirag Dilli red light, by far the most crowded point in South Delhi. From Chirag Delhi I catch a bus home.
Coincidentally I am alone in the cab. Listening to music and dreaming. The cab turns into a lane parallel to the main road. A cat crosses the road in front of the cab.
The cabbie drives on without a blink. I try to look at the incident casually but its sticks to my mind. I tell myself I don’t believe in such things. After all that’s how I have been always. I reach Chirag Delhi; the cab gets badly stuck in traffic. I get off in the jam itself and started juggling between the cars. Bang! I hit a car. Ya, I hit a car, the car didn’t hit me. Stupid the car was static it couldn’t move in the traffic. I hurt my leg a bit, not enough to stop and look at it. I can see my bus in the middle of the jam packed road. I know it won’t stop at the bus stop. In a matter of minutes the red light will turn green yet I remain rooted to my spot. I have already hurt my leg and I have a premonition something worse can happen. The voices of my parents telling me about the cat keep coming to my mind. I am paranoid. I simply cannot walk to the bus in the jam packed road.
Me who laughs and has no patience with people who can’t cross roads.

The light turns green. The bus leaves. Another one comes and leaves. I take an auto home.
All education, rationality, scientific progress goes boink! Why did I do it I still can’t answer myself? I don’t believe in superstitions. Then why? And what has it got to do with atheism?