It is interesting that there is such a big fan club for astrology. We are all ever waiting for these predictions to come true. But life just moves paying scant respect to the predictions. People who were supposed to marry many years back continue unmarried, people who were supposed to live are dead, girls who were certain to have marriages only with the consent of their parents have turned against them and so on. Does this astrology help in giving some kind of false hope for the lost , or is it false promise? I do not know. I will wait and watch . Somebody somewhere was supposed to have been married many years back and we are all still waiting and waiting- It seems the marriage times are still switched on, as per this astrologer and there does not appear to be a ray of hope. Pity!
Shri subbudu sir,
Astrology was suitable for the Indians in general, perhaps, and tabras in particular, in a different age and time. It was one of the vedangas and was taught by guru to a few proper sishyas only (not like the vedas proper which were taught to anyone from the three upper castes) and the sishyas in turn did their 'pick and choose' later. But today the situation is that any tom, dick or harry can teach himself astrology, get some publicity and once he gets a base of clientele, he can then prosper, no looking back, as they say!
Recently one of my distant relatives expired at the age of 80. His sons were planning to celebrate his satabhishekam, but he said, "wait for a week before you book mandapam and all that." On the eighth day, early morning, he got up, complained of "some discomfort" but beore his dil brought hot water to drink he was no more. I know of another case of a well-known Iyengar vakil. He stopped accepting cases which would come up after a certain date in the court. When his neighbour, friend and daily co-walker in the evenings asked him why, this vakil is supposed to have said "naan irukka maaTTEn". And when he died and his son (vakil) opened the father's diary, it seems there were the words "last day for me" on the date he expired.
I can also vouchsafe one account. One young boy of twentyish, a bright student, suddenly became mad and uncontrollable and had to be put in asylum in Delhi. The boy's family, well off, did lot of parihaarams and treatments but without results. Then they heard of one parasurama jyosyar of Trivandrum and came to him. He did the "prasnam" and said the boy's grandfather had died recently but it was a murder and the ghost is causing all this trouble. The boy's relatives asked him who had killed that person; after insistence, he replied that it was done by a woman who was to the deceased like a wife. Those people did not believe the jyosyar at all but did all the parihaarams as per his advice and the boy became normal. After an year the boy's parents came and prostrated before the jyosyar asking for his pardon because subsequent events and enquiry through private detectives had convinced them that the deceased man's wife had poisoned him in collusion with his boss and her lover, and had gone to live with that person after the one-year period from death was over!
There were such capable astrologers but may be no more. Let us not judge that branch of knowledge with our standards of today and the rampant misuse to which astrology has been subjected to.
