Myth: Don’t throw away/waste salt else you will need to collect it by your Eyelids: Logical Reason

This is very famous myth in Malwa and Nimad anchal that “you should not waste salt neither you should throw it away else you will need to collect each wasted particle of salt by your eyelids when you will face god”.

I heard this when I was not more than 14-15 year old and I heard this from guy of my age only. I was not able to believe on this as I always believed on science or logics (thanks to my grandfather) so I asked about this to my grandfather and his reply was something that showed logical reason of this myth. He explained me this with few question answers I would like to post those question and answers here. I can still remember each and every word of that chat

My grandfather: “do you know from where wheat comes”?

Me: From farms.

My Grandfather: What about rice, vegetables and other cereals.

Me: Same answer from farms.

My Grandfather: “do you know from where salt comes”?

Me:“From Sea” (I promptly replied him; luckily I was aware about salt making process because of some story or comics book).

My Grandfather: That’s the reason why they created this myth.

Me: I dint get it; please explain what you mean with this.

My Grandfather: “If you need to buy 1KG salt today you can go to shop and you will get 1KG of salt in 4-5 Rs because today goods transportation is very easy, you can have tons of Salt from coastal region to any part of the country in maximum 2-3 days but in earlier time it was not possible because they used to ship it by bull carts with a limited weight capacity.

Some time it takes several weeks for transportation from coastal region to central or northern region of India. In this transportation transporters bull cart runner had to face lot of problem they had to cross multiple states and follow all the guidelines created by those states for salt transportation. Other than this many more reason was there that made salt very expensive and a material that everyone should use with closed hand.

As salt was very fundamental ingredient of every food material so in ancient time every government/king had to arrange it (some time on government expenses) for providing necessary requirement to their people for smooth command on them.”

My Grandfather Continued: “To save misuse or wastage of salt someone created this myth so everyone will follow it delicately. There could be different theory for origination of this myth like “a king talked with minister for stopping wastage of salt and they suggested that pujari’s should create this myth to aam janta” or “A family leader of big joint family that has lot of children found lot of wasting of salt from child’s and he created this myth so children can avoid wasting it due to fear of god and punishment”. Whatever theory we take logical reason for creating this myth was saving wastage of salt.”

After explaining above thing my grandfather told me “Many myth that we follow in India has logical or scientific reason and before doing a blind faith on any of the myth always think a reason behind it.”

He explained me about touch and don’t touch theory that I will explain in my future post.

I hope it was informative and interesting too.

Your comments will increase my moral to write more J