It's All In The Stars

Deep in the Indian psyche is rooted a morbid fascination with astrology and its influence has crept into every aspect of our lives. During the recent elections, no leader worth his salt filed his nomination on the day of the solar eclipse, seeing it as a bad omen. Then followed Friday the 13th, again an inauspicious day by the western calender so why take a chance? The Government too waited for an auspicious date to be sworn in and though 13 is considered unlucky by some, it has been fortunate for our Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who has been prime minister before for 13 days and 13 months. Again almost all our politicians have personal astrologers and it is not uncommon to see a yellow sapphire flash on one index finger or an emerald on another finger, as both connote power or wealth.

Weddings in India are rarely arranged till the horoscopes have been matched. Even before photographs are exchanged, horoscopes are exchanged and matched and words like manglik and dosh float about in liberal doses. Our astrologers are adept at making not so well-matched horoscopes match, after the families have parted with a little packet which takes care of the upay or pujas meant to correct the small dosh. The more critical of us can argue that it is fate or destiny and that the astrologers can hardly play God. Most Hindu families cast horoscopes at birth and not knowing one’s time and date of birth is sacrilegious even today.

Having been brought up in a liberal atmosphere through my childhood, the efforts of a family astrologer went abegging. Again, it was only at the time of marriage that my husband’s family cast and matched my horoscope. It turned out that we had been espoused in previous birth, joyful news at the time, but it was soon forgotten. When my older son Krish was born, again we were told that it was a good horoscope and that as far as we were concerned, it was the end of the matter. Astrology started to play more of a role in my life as things started to go wrong.

I must admit that I was perhaps ripe for the picking and fell straight into the astrology trap. Yet, despite the fact that I had met over a dozen astrologers, tarot card readers, palmists and face readers between 1994 and 1995, not even one predicted that I would be a widow in July 1995. So where did they go wrong? In the days after Rajan’s death, I remember his family telling me that a certain day was auspicious to perform a certain ceremony and another day was not, and I remember feeling so betrayed by the whole clan of astrologers that I thought to heck with it!

When later that year, an astrologer in Mumbai, Panditji Gangadhar, came home unannounced one evening, I ranted and raved at him for not having been able to predict the obvious. He gently reminded me that he had predicted that Rajan would be taken ill in the first week of July and would need to be taken to the hospital and then solemnly maintained that my chart did not show that I was meant to be widowed and that since Rajan’s end was the result of a murder, no one could have predicted it. I have since been told by other men of prominence in the field that this theory holds true and I now believe it.

I have a clutch of astrologers that I consult on a regular basis, but more out of curiosity than total faith. A self-styled consultant of mine, Guptaji from Calcutta, is an astrologer who predicts with quite a high degree of accuracy and since he is also the personal astrologer to the prime minister of Sri Lanka and to another prominent friend of mine, he comes with good references. I believe him up to a point, but then again he has always maintained that it’s all in my stars and he is merely stating what is obvious. Astrology is based on the activity of the nine grahas or planets whose effect on our life depends on the time and date of our birth. There are believers and non-believers alike of this ancient science but at the end of the day as they say, it is all written in your stars!