Yesterday I took time out from work to visit a place in Mahalakshmipura near ISKON temple. The folks here have a repository of ancient palm leaves that allegedly have the lives of people written on them, and people flock this place to see if they have theirs, and to know how their life is going to be.
My experience with it is a mixed bag. It definitely seems to have some truth in it, but I wasnt awed by what it had to say.
About 4000 years ago, Sage Agastya is supposed to have written down lives of everyone in palm leaves and it is supposed to have been passed down from generation to generation. They claim that time moves in cycles, and history repeats itself. So once is so-many-years lives of people repeat. This was documented for one full cycle, and now it is simply a repeating of that cycle. About 800 years ago, these palm leaves’ scriptures (which were written in sanskrit), were translated to tamil, and it is these leaves that are being preserved here and read from.
This is how it works:
First you take an appointment, mine was postponed twice before I got this one.
When you show up there on time, they take you thumb impression. Based on your thumb impression they isolate one bundle of palm leaves. Looks like they use the characterisics of your finger print to index the bundles. Pretty impressive considering these were written centuries ago!
Once the bundle has been identified, they proceed to ask you questions to zero in on your palm leaf (Assuming they do have yours).
You are expected to answer either “yes” or “no” alone.
The questions are like: Does your name start with the sound “Da” or “Ta” or “Tha”? Were you born on a sunday? Is your father’s name a name of lord Krishna? Have you studies in Mechanical field, or in Civil? and so on. He goes about discarding and considering leaves based on your responses, and then finally her zeros in on one leaf, that is supposed to be yours.
Of course, it has happened often that the leaf corresponding to some people havent been found at all. So If you are “lucky” you get yours.
Once that is obtained, he proceeds to narrates what is written in it. The reader told me that he was simply reading out what was written in it, and it is not his job to interpret it.
What he had to say about me and my family didnt impress me much coz he didnt tell me anything that I hadnt already answered to (albeit in part) when was asking me questions.
He didnt ask me anything about my brother, and neither did he tell what my brother’s name was.
He had asked me about the syllables in my name, my mother’s name and my father’s name and he told the names out perfectly (I must admit, that is a long shot to get it right by guessing or by fluke).
He zeroed in on my date of birth, but didnt ask or tell me anything about my time of birth, but amazingly, he read out my horroscope as in the palm leaf and when I subsequently compared it with the one my mother had it made when I was born, it was a perfect match! These horroscope entires change with the time of birth as well, yet he got it right to the dot!
Then he proceeded to predict my future, I will now if its true only when the time comes. Interestingly, he talked of my previous lives and the sins I had committed then, and that they were a part of the reason why I have to face hardships in my present life and so on. Also he suggested a remedy (again reading all this out from the leaf) for it. In the end he said that they do it themselves, and it’s going to cost me 3000 bucks :)
All said and done, he told me things that he couldnt possibly have known, yet none of it was something, that couldnt be deduced. Yet there were no names mentioned in my predictions, there was very little reference of my past to verify the authenticity of what was written. All I can say is that it promises to be genuine, yet the only way to verify it is to wait for a few months, after which I will know if the prediction made for that period come true or not.
I am a firm believer that astrology is a science, may not be an exact science, but is definitely a science that hasnt been researched upon enough for people to discard it. This seems to be a derivative of astrology. I dont trust the predictions that were made at its face. But I must admit, there is something to it.
I know of people who have been awed by what the leaf had to say about them. One of my accquaintances who had her’s read at chennai told me that he told her things about her that only she could have known and no one else. It freaked her out completely. Another friend of mine told me that his uncle was told he would die in 3 years time, and in 1 and 1/2 years’ time he was diagnosed with cancer, and he passed away in 3 year’s time. These are not arguments in favour of the excercise, but mere observations that merit attention.
Anyone wants to get their life told to them? On a palm leaf?
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