Naadi Astrology at Vaithishwaran Koil

At the outset, I would like to profess that I am writing this only to tell how I felt when I went to Vaithishwaran Koil, a sleepy town in Tamil Nadu that is famous for its nadi astrology, but not to hurt the feelings of the believers in astrology because I do believe in astrology.

As I was fascinated by the stories I heard of and read about the wonders of astrologers at Vaithishwaran Koil, one not so fine evening, I got down the bus in the town accompanied by a friend. After settling down in a small shared-room at a lodge, we went out to enquire about the best astrologer in the town. The streets were abuzz with brisk business and people floating from elsewhere like us. There were some foreign tourists surrounded by local touts.

The legend was that some ancient sages handed over a treasure trove of palm leaves on which the fate of every visitor to the town was written. The palm leaves were earlier with the royal family of Tanjore but somehow they went into the hands of the astrologers now living in Vaithishwaran Koil. There are a few clans of the astrologers who claim to belong to a particular school of thought, known as naadi. Each naadi  is named after an ancient sage. So, there are a couple of astrologers belonging to each naadi. It was believed that you were destined to visit the place, if your leaf was written some hundreds of years ago. The leaves have all your details—the past, present and future, including your past birth. It is all fixed or pre-determined—your visit to that place, timing of your visit and your astrologer—everything.

So, I go there on that day and time determined by those unknown sages years and years ago. On our inquest, we felt that people there did not want to mouth off their opinions about the astrologers or astrology. They were silent to our questions. All that they said was that many people throng to that place in search of their palm leaves.

Since there were many clans of astrologers, as I have said already, we zeroed in on one naadi astrologer just following our intuition. Next morning, we were into our astrologer’s office. The chief astrologer took a print of my palm and collected some preliminary information such as which part of the country we come from—which city/town/region etc. There were a few teenagers clad in white with vibhuti smeared on their foreheads. They all appeared to be school dropouts and they are all said to be trained in reading palm leaves. After a while, one of those teenagers led me into a cabin and while one more teenager took my friend to another.

The teenager told me that he would ask me some questions and all I have to do was to answer his questions saying “yes/no”. That is how they find out our palm leaves. With a palm leaf in his hand, he shot a few questions in a quick succession and I answered them as he instructed. He went upstairs stating that it was not my leaf. He came with a fresh leaf and questioning went on. Thus, after a few questions, every time, he would go up and bring back another leaf and start questioning. This went on for about two hours or so. His questions were random—some were repeated and some were modified, extended or appended. After many attempts of rephrasing the questions, he told me he found my leaf and gave my name, my wife’s name and the number of children I had perfectly. Afterwards, the chief astrologer gave me my horoscope written in a booklet. He told me in my past birth I was a king of a small region somewhere in Tamilnadu. He painted a rosy picture of my future also but not anything that really happened in my past.

The questions put by the teenager were, in fact, only statements. They were something like:

• Your name has three parts.
• You were born in a bathroom.
• Yours is a love marriage.
• Your name begins with the letter ‘d’.
• Your wife’s name begins with the letter ‘s’.

This was how the grilling session goes on. You can now think what happens when such random questions are shot at you. Sometimes, we slip and give information rather than mere “yes/no”. Even if it is simple “yes/no”, the simple fact is that it is you who give all the information, but not, as you think, they would give you. They must have stored lot of databases from which they correlate our particulars from our “yes/no” answers and retrieve the information. So, it is no wonder that after quite a few clever questions, getting personal information such as your name, your spouse’s name, the number of children you have and so on is not a problem. However, you get a thrilling experience when they tell you the above details.

My fascination turned to a discovery, which I wanted to share with others. One has to wonder really about the technique they developed years ago, a good enough time before the advent or popularity of the computers. My thesis goes like this:

• They have developed a large database of names—region-wise, nation-wise.
• They reason out all our data from our own answers though they are only simple “yes/no”.
• They have developed a fool-proof “query” system which they manipulate manually and correlate with the database.
• If they fail to retrieve any data from their database—that is to say, if they fail to give your name and other preliminary information correctly, they say that your leaf is not with them. The reason could be something like your leaf might have been destroyed accidentally or something like that. I have seen a Canadian woman whose name they could not get properly even after two successive days of questioning. The simple reason is that they do not have enough database of Canadian names or for that matter of other nations excepting a few common names. If your name is unique, then also, I believe, it is difficult for them to tell it no matter whatever nation you belong to.
• The teenagers are trained to ask questions and remember answers in a systematic order and they go up and feed the outputs to a master who in turn is well versed in accessing the database and in turn would give the teenagers a new set of questions.
• The technique could become easier, if you employ a computer with databases.

I leave you here leaving everything to your own sagaciousness for you need not agree with me.