Planets and predictions

I have had a love-hate relationship with Indian astrology. May be 'love' and 'hate' are strong words, but the phrase captures the essence reasonably.

As a kid, I learnt a bit of astrology myself, under my grandpa. My grandpa's predictions eminently came true in many cases. Understandably, my family, by and large, believes in astrology. When I learnt the basics myself, I too was approached by the extended family. For a while I thoroughly enjoyed being at the centre of attention. Soon, it wore off. I realized that when it came to specific questions, I was only making inspired and educated guesses. Besides the excessive interest and belief in predictions turned me off.

Of late, there has possibly been a change again. I wonder if I had tried to throw the baby with the bath water, so to say. May be apart from the guess-work and the placebo effect, there is a teeny-tiny bit of sense to the whole thing. A scientific approach to the topic definitely requires an in-depth study, under the specific experimental conditions, to test the sense of the subject.

In any case, this post was inspired by an amusing incident. I met someone in my extended family, who apparently dabbles in astrology a fair bit. My aunt introduced me and said that as a kid I too had learnt astrology. And that I had just given my civil services exams.

I thought I was just doing small-talk and not appearing dumb about what I had learnt in astrology, but I had inadvertently revealed the strategic planets, so to say, of my own chart to him. He figured the rest from my birth year. His mind raced with the mathematical calculations involved, and he started making small predictions.

He told me that the presence of multiple planets in the fifth house implied a chequered career. And that the presence of Ketu - a foreign planet - in the tenth house (labha kshetram) meant that I would always profit from foreign countries (like Singapore and the USA, for example :)

Before he could pronounce a verdict on my eagerly awaited results, I scurried to change the topic and engage other on-lookers into another topic.

Kids are so energetic!

I went to Mumbai recently. My return flight was delayed by over an hour and I was waiting in the airport, reading a magazine. Suddenly there was a lot of chirpy talk and a bunch of school kids excitedly took some empty seats nearby. Apparently, they were from a boarding school and were going on a tour to Jaipur, Delhi and Agra.

One 4th class girl was particularly energetic. She kept asking her Ma'm all sorts of questions and I was surprised to see the teacher patiently answering her questions. The kid would jump on to a completely new topic, forgetting everything about the previous one.

When it was announced that their flight would be delayed by half-an-hour, she looked towards her friends and said, "kya life ban gayi hai hamari.. tch.." and made a face. Next moment, she was begging her Ma'm to let her eat her chocolates.

She saw me smiling at her antics and covered her face. Then as I went back to reading my magazine, she offered me a chocolate and said, "take it." I laughed and said, "no, thanks!"

After a few minutes, she asked me, "you have chote-chote bache at your home?" I told her that I was the youngest at home. She puckered her mouth and said, "tho tumhi kha lo na yeh chocolate."

So energetic! I guess, I am trying to tell my respected elders to work on getting me some nephews and nieces :)

Future!

As I look towards future, standing here, I wonder what future has in store!

There are many pairs of paths and I am to choose one of the two in each pair. And, each of them will lead to varying lifestyles- different friend-circles, distinct daily routines, problems and fun activities.

I probably don't have much of a 'choice' left either in some pairs.

Engineering versus Civil Services is one of the pair of paths.

Even spiritually, I stand at the door steps of 'faith.' So far my spiritual practises via Art of Living have been based on experimentation and verification. Now, the next step is 'surrender!' In view of authoritative claims, I wonder if not going to the next step is foolish!