I was born on Jestha Masiya, the darkest night of the month. No one told me what it meant, but I noticed things. My grandmother would wipe the puja tray after I touched it. During festivals, I wasn't allowed to put tika on anyone. When I asked why, my mother just smiled and said, "You're special." But it didn't feel special.
When I was thirteen, I overheard someone whisper, "She was born on that night and that's why bad things keep happening." After that, I couldn't stop wondering if something was wrong with me. My parents took me to a man who circled me with smoke, tied a black thread on my wrist, and told me not to speak for a day. No one asked why. They called it protection. But no one protected me from the silence that followed. I wasn't cursed. But their belief almost made me believe I was.
This isn't just a story it's a reality still faced by many girls today. In some communities, being born on the night of the new moon is seen as a bad omen. Girls born on this night are often labeled as unlucky or cursed, blamed for anything that goes wrong in the family. To remove the so-called curse, families turn to secret rituals meant to "cleanse" the girl. These rituals are usually kept hidden due to fear of social shame. The process is intense and isolating.
The girl is taken to a remote place, maybe a forest, an old shrine, or a quiet temple usually early in the morning or under the cover of the night. She's accompanied by a few elders. There, she's told to sit on the bare ground, surrounded by smoke, seeds, threads, or symbolic objects. A spiritual leader or healer performs a ritual, claiming to remove the dark energy and transfer it into an item like a fruit, a coin, or even a doll, which is then thrown into a river or buried. Afterward, the girl may be told to not speak, not to bathe, or to avoid certain foods. Her clothes might be burned and replaced with "pure" (clean) ones. Even after the ritual, she might get excluded from family events and religious ceremonies for a while.
These practices leave deep emotional scars. Many of these girls grow up feeling like a problem that needs to be fixed questioning their worth, their identity, and their place in the world. The real curse isn't their birth date. It's the belief they have to carry because of it.
People often underestimate how much something like a birth date could affect anyone. We would never be able to think that a simple birth date would affect anyone. But what do you think your life would be if you were born on Jestha Masiya? The problem is not in the birth date but in the way our society is built and the superstitions we still follow. How does that girl feel when she is called cursed when it is not her fault?
This superstition is passed through generations and is still being followed in some rural parts of our country. Most people don't even know about these beliefs but it affects us deeply. While Jestha Masiya has been part of major beliefs in the country for over a century, we should focus on adding change to the world by educating families, building strict laws and raising awareness so that no child is judged because of when they were born.