God works in mysterious ways. One of those ways is how crystal gazers of various kinds, sizes and numbers earn their often-substantial incomes. It is baffling why their clientele keeps parting with its hard-earned money to ensure a constant stream of revenue going their way, but there you are. Aristotle is said to have bestowed upon homo sapiens the epithet of ‘rational’ animals. The label has stuck, and to our day there have always been those who dutifully repeat the cliché on a weekly basis. An infinitely more fruitful avenue for their energies would have been the quest to discover the chemical Aristotle was under the influence of when he coined the term.
The clairvoyant community is not complaining, for even a fortune teller is obliged to put food on the table. Our subcontinent has always been a fertile ground for these practitioners. Numerologists and astrologers appearing on TV may be a recent phenomenon, and foretelling election results (as opposed to personal fortunes) more recent still; but the profession itself has been going strong for centuries. That said, the fixation with knowing the future is by no means just a desi thing. During a visit to Pulao Penang back in 2001, I observed that the hotel management had thought it a good idea to have a resident palm-reader (who rendered his services for a reasonable RM 40), a decision that was fully justified by the substantial number of patrons of the establishment eager to get their fortunes told.
It was 1999 when I first witnessed the popularity of palmists. The event was an iftaar party – of all occasions! The star of the evening, a middle-aged palmist referred to as ‘Uncle’, was mobbed by guests (especially girls) desirous of getting their palms read. He was basking in glory as anyone would under the circumstances. Half-way into the evening the hostess introduced me to him adding for good measure that I thought all this fortune telling business was balderdash (or words to that effect). I immediately raised my hand to state my precise, nuanced take on the subject but just at that moment two ladies vying for his attention intervened; and that was the end of that as far as I was concerned.
A few minutes later, it was ‘Uncle’ who sought me out. I noticed that by now he had well and truly stopped basking. At first, I thought it had something to do with the fact that all the ladies had kept calling him ‘Uncle’. Then it dawned upon me that he had not taken kindly to my reservations about his vocation. For he went out of his way to assure me that he agreed with my point of view (which I had yet to disclose – probably he was a mind reader as well); and that he made no claims of infallibility in his knowledge. His was a probabilistic kind of knowledge; and only God knew the future with certainty; etc. One line is still fresh in the memory: ‘We merely claim that it usually rains when clouds gather from this [randomly pointing his finger] direction.’ (The ‘we’ was apparently a reference to the collective Nostradamus community.)
For folks who possess powers of knowing the future, these clairvoyants can be awfully insecure. Not content with possessing superhuman skills, they want everybody to acknowledge their unsurpassed genius. But weird that these seers are, could anybody be stranger than their own clients who happily squander their resources on this lot?
Having thus satisfactorily laid my concerns to rest (in his opinion), he expressed the hope that I would now let him read my palm. I told him then what I had wanted to earlier: That while I did not doubt his expertise, I failed to see any benefit in knowing the future even if – especially if – it was an accurate picture I was going to get. ‘Uncle’ smiled and made all the right noises (‘Of course, it’s a free world or words to that effect) but I could see he was far from happy.
Flash forward twenty years to 2019, when I had the occasion to meet another palm-reader doubling as a portraitist. Legend has it that he had been shown a print of General Zia’s palm (without telling him whose hand it was); and he had predicted, as early as 1980, that the man was going to perish in a plane crash. The source of this legend is none other than the legend himself. Be that as it may, he appears to have quite a following in London and Islamabad (I can vouch for his popularity in the latter). At a gathering in a friend’s house, I was the only one not itching for my palm to be read; and this seemed to bother him no end. Consequently, he became very anxious to read it. He started by doing a mean impersonation of a pretty lady accustomed to getting attention from all quarters, but who one odd day fails to trigger the curiosity of a man. He then tried to ‘reason’ with me; and became decidedly morose when it became obvious that I was not likely to be won over. Finally, he said: ‘Do visit my home someday to see my paintings. Wear gloves if that is what it takes.’
For folks who possess powers of knowing the future, these clairvoyants can be awfully insecure. Not content with possessing superhuman skills, they want everybody to acknowledge their unsurpassed genius. But weird that these seers are, could anybody be stranger than their own clients who happily squander their resources on this lot?
On the art or craft of prognostication, people range from believers to sceptics, with everything in between. The whole debate on the reliability (or impossibility) of precognition is misplaced. The relevant questions, which nobody seems to ask, are these: What exactly is the point of it all? If something good is bound to happen, it will happen. If, on the other hand, something bad is ‘written’, how exactly does it help to know it in advance?
