Comfort food for future-perfect agonisers, forecasting swerves into time

pass and the party chic fast lane. Analysing the modern-day predilection for

predictions, Manjula Sen encounters New Age pundits who break old moulds

They led Kans and Herod to slaughter newborn males, Macbeth to murder, Sleeping Beauty into a coma and many an ill-suited pair into doomed marriages. Predictions, if one goes by lore and mythology, have an uncanny ability to tempt fate. Ironically, for their most truculent votaries, very often they are a case of caveat emptor or buyer beware!

But try telling that to the committed future-perfect agonisers among us: Thanks to them, business is booming for modern-day astrologers and the rest of the soothsayer clan. In the age of revivalism, the heady brew offers instant karma, quick fixes and instant pacifiers but there is a twist in today's tipple. In the age of revivalism, everyone asks what lies ahead but few want to really know.

Mamta Ghosh is a 30-something ciggie-waving senior television marketing exec in Mumbai. She and I have two things in common. First, an addiction for predictions. Mamta has gone to the face reader who sits every Tuesday at a South Mumbai café, the horoscopeman in distant Kandivli, the crystal gazer in Bandra, the signature analyst in Vashi and the neighbour down her lane who has a reputation for looking into your past with unnerving accuracy. She reads the daily forecast in the newspapers and clicks on online fortune cookies. Advice has ranged from changing residence and gemstones to changing husband. She has spent a small fortune on advice that she never ever follows. (That is the second thing we have in common - exit the door, exit the ear.)

It's her comfort food. As it is for many others. Some take the diet seriously, others flirt with it. Shashi Nambiar, a well read business consultant, has just bought his new flat after surviving some rocky times. "Astrologers are the last hope for lost people," he laughs. "When there is failure all around, why not take a chance with soothsayers? You always come back happy you went."

As forecasting swerves into time pass, party chic fast lane, the seekers don't live by the advice that they chase so assiduously and Nostradamus has a makeover. Sheetal Sahni is a post-grad psychology student in Delhi, whose visit to her beautician is a two-in-one mission. Along with tweezing eyebrows, the lady also dispenses predictions and Sheetal usually ends up contributing Rs 800 at every visit; 80 per cent of that is for the shape of her future. Evidently, you look and believe better when you pay more is the subliminal message. Rs 700 for half-hour sessions to 5k, and climbing, for unlimited time. The market rules out here.

Kundalini and tarot medium, Nandini Zhaveri, says the 'buyers' mentality has a lot to do with it: cheap advice is taken as unbankable advice. And freeloaders usually outstay their welcome. Zhaveri's clients are usually between 25-38 ("Should I leave my philandering husband?") and even younger ("What will my SAT score be?). Zhaveri comes from a wealthy jeweller's family. An MA in psychology, she chose her present calling after drawing a blank with many astrologers. "Having gone through all kinds of financial, emotional and health problems, I realised I could relate to people in pain better."

The New Age pundits break old moulds. When a women's magazine that you all love to read had its milestone party at a hip nightclub, the longest queues were not at the bar but at the Marjorie Orr-meets-Linda Goodman avatar seated at the opposite end of the dance floor. Stars, singers, star wives and CEOs shouldered their way through the black-clad throng to where Manisha Singh Dudhaney, tarot reader and psychic healer, held court.

No longer a one-size-fits-all, the market economy has risen to the demand for comfort level, says Arun Naik, a counsellor at the Institute for Psychological Health in Thane. Packaging counts. "Even for problem solvers, a client will always look for a product that suits his status."

The Indian is essentially an optimist. Indeed, we are so willing to bare our

private lives and trust a stranger to comfort or warn us. Nambiar admits with a chuckle, "You know that they (astrologers) are going by the leads you have given in your conversation. But then at least you find someone you feel understands you."

Naik believes it has something to do with a culture of unquestioning acceptance, of a lack of scientific spirit, of being told rather than exploring. Even scientists and doctors abandon rationale for horoscopes and predictions, he points out. A well-known septuagenarian gynaecologist in Mumbai admits to some faith in astrologers. "Every 10 years a particular astrologer makes predictions for me, without my asking, and they have all come true."

When three vermillion-streaked foreheads popped up in a glass-and chrome downtown office of a lead agency, it was not to model for a shoot. They were there as Diwali treats for the media planners of the agency. Over 60 employees queued up to have their prospects told. "It was good time pass," laughed one. Fortune-tellers are the magicians at the grown-up's party. "I think it is a matter of how comfortable we are with ourselves," feels Shama Kabir, a single mother, who was at the party where Dudhaney caused a space jam. "I didn't feel the need to know because my life was acceptable as it was, not perfect, but acceptable."

Zhaveri takes her calling seriously. She offers a solution-based approach. People come when they are in pain or have a problem. "Everyone predicts but the people are looking for a solution. That is more important." The suspecting wife was advised to hang in for six months. "I did not tell her that her husband was womanising. Today, her husband has reformed and she is happy in her marriage." Isn't that being unfair to clients who seek the truth? "She never asked me specifically. If you are not asking I am not telling. It is my duty to mend not mar," she retorts.

During the recent polls, the man, who in a magazine had predicted A B Vajpayee would be penning more poems than helming the country, was being asked for sound bites by a respectful reporter on television. I am reminded of a little tale. An astrologer looked at the horoscope before him. And declared the man it belonged to, a loser. He had nothing - no material possessions, no conjugal companion, no heir. As it turned out, the horoscope belonged to Adi Shankarcharaya.

It is all about how you look at the half-filled glass.