Drinking water and thanking God, Before Sleeping in the Night

I can recall the time when my sister Manjeet Kaur and I were very young. Our youngest Mamaji,  Inder Singh Lamba, had come over to our place in Jeypore Odisha.

One night before going to sleep he had narrated a story to us about why it's important to drink water and thank God before we go to sleep.  He had told us that if we go to sleep without drinking water then our soul may go out of the body in search of water.  At home naturally the only place where the soul would go was the kitchen area.  Those days drinking water used to be stored in earthen pots or copper vessels with a cover on top.  The soul would open the cover and get into the pot or vessel to quench its thirst. 

He had said that it was important for the soul to return into the body in a stipulated period of time, say 5 to 10 minutes.  If it would fail to do so then next morning the person would be found dead.  Now normally, he had assured that, the soul would return to the body after quenching its thirst.  But by chance if someone else also happens to go to the pot to drink the water at the same time and then covers he pot with the plate then the poor soul wouldn't be able to escape the pot and return to the body.

This narration hade my sister and I so scared that till date we are in the habit of not only drinking water before hitting the bad but have also developed the habit of keeping small filled water bottles around our pillows so that in case thirst wakes us up we will have water around us to quench our thirst.

Though the story of the soul going out of the body was a fake one it has helped us to develop a good habit to drink water and thank God before sleeping which is good for both our health and the soul.

S.S. Thaper

31.07.2018