To believe or not to believe, the endless argument about credibility of future-telling

"Et tu, Brute (you too, Brutus?)" Julius Caesar cried out, as he lay dying in agony, stabbed 23 times by his senators in a modus operandi of betrayal. Caesar had been forewarned by a 'soothsayer' of his impending death, but had paid him no heed. The date was March 15, 44BC, initially monikered 'The Ides of March' by the Romans for religious observances and settling debts on this full moon day. Today, pop culture resurrects this assassination for its prophecy. In 2017, it prompted 'The Ides of Trump' where POTUS received loads of hate mail from the public, telling him why he was no longer needed in office. Like Caesar, Trump ignored the messages, and is alive, and in fact kicking many out of office. Then, last year, based on two studies involving over 2,000 adult respondents from Germany and Spain, the journal Psychological Review found that about 85-90 per cent do not wish to be foretold negative events, and 40 to 70 per cent didn't want to hear about positive events. Only one percent consistently wanted to know their future. In India, however, it's a war of equals, with rationalists debunking astrologers and diviners for their 'disaster yarn' and believers who cock a snook at the other side. Here's a slice of the current argument:

"Aaise makadiyo ke jaal mein makhiyon jaise phasna mat (Don't get trapped like flies in spiders' webs)," forewarns Narendra Nayak, a 67-year-old retired professor of biochemistry at Kasturba Medical College, Pune. Nayak, a staunch rationalist and an atheist who calls himself a humanist, has contributed 125 articles to Nirmukta, a portal that describes itself as "a platform for the free thought and secular humanist community in India and South Asia." In one article, A Quack's Flop Show, he wrote how the faculty and students of a medical institution and hospital took the pants off an astrologer whose rate card starts off at Rs5,100 for one question lasting no longer than 10 minutes over the phone. A pediatrician suggested that he list out all the dates of future illnesses so the parents could secure the child's good health, and also asked him to predict the baby's career at the time of the birth. Another professional added that on deciphering the illness prehand, the patient would not need to spend on diagnostic tests. Nayak challenged the astrologer to foretell academic excellence based on astrological charts rather than entrance tests. Alas, the astrologers had no answers to the questions. "A newspaper reported that he later left without accepting the memento," says Nayak. The rationalist also cites another instance where he 'tested out' an astrologer – "I gave him the kundali of a dead man and he predicted another 20 years of life for him, assuming it was my horoscope. And so, this is total bulls**t."

(From left: Scrying with candle wax; a depiction of Rahu, considered a shadow planet in astrology)

On the other hand, there's Mumbai-based Vedic astrologer Sushil Chaturvedi, some of whose predictions were bang-on and reported in The Week, The Times, and The Illustrated Weekly — Bill Clinton being elected President twice despite the Lewinsky scandal, Sonia Gandhi never becoming the Prime Minister nor Priyanka Gandhi joining politics, and Saddam Hussein heading to become a stranger in his own country, fleeing Iraq and facing exile till death. "[Godman] Chandraswami visited me in October 1987 and told me to make a horoscope, only giving me a date of birth. He didn't tell me it was his horoscope. Among other hints, the chart showed Mars and Saturn in the 7th house, a combination that doesn't allow one to marry. I recognised it was his horoscope and told him so. I also predicted he would be arrested before March 1988. He was sent to jail briefly in February 1988," recalls Chaturvedi.

On this point, Soorya Sriram, admin of Indian Atheists, a branch of Nirmukta, and an engineer, jumps in. "While I marvel at the capabilities of the seers of the past to spot Mars and Venus without a telescope, I cannot accept the positioning of these planets at the time of my birth determines whether or not I will get a promotion now. Future diviners make say, 50 large claims and of those only three things will happen, while 47 others won't. This is how they defraud those who come to them, mostly when in trouble and desperate to hear someone say, 'You'll have a great life'. However, some astrologers I've met are genuinely nice, but genuinely believe they have the power. I find that problematic."

Both Nayak and Sriram call these age-old techniques of foretelling an exercise in 'cold reading', which means convincing you, who they call "victim", in getting your past from your own history by reading your body signals. "Facial responses, when a person nods...etc., they pick up on cues like that. Like the mentalist theory in magic, an art anyone can pick up," says Sriram.

On the other hand, Hetal Desai, a psychic healer who runs a travel portal and mashes her Western education as a registered medical practitioner (hypnosis licence) with her eastern learnings of foretelling, says it's necessary to gauge the body language, tone, anxiety and behaviour, while doing a reading. "Psychology is the study of these subtle nonverbal communications that rely on energy, breathing and expressions. We all feel energies or 'vibes' as you call it. For instance, in an overcrowded Mumbai local, you get drained faster because everyone's energies are high, but feel relaxed when the compartment is empty." She claims to have successfully predicted shifting to new places, birth of children, travel plans abroad aided by these divination techniques and calculations using letters, phonetic sounds and numbers of the name and date of birth.

Echoing Desai is Anil Babubhai Acharya, a 12th generation chhaya shastri (who claims to foretell by reading your shadow). Always dressed in white, the fruitarian, whose father began teaching him this technique since he was three years old, attributes the oral tradition to the Aryans. He says the sun's energy determines the course of your life. "Positive and negative energy exists. Positive energy, like love doesn't follow gender, hence you have gay unions. I once sensed a strong masculine energy in a teenage girl and told her she'll grow a moustache after couple of years. Her family thought I was mad, but then it actually happened. Just like it's up to a child to accept or reject breast milk from its mother, it's upto people to recognise or reject this energy."

But rationalist Sriram, who has more faith in science says it's all just plain energy. "There's no good or bad energy or vibes. Vibration is energy moving back and forth. How can that be positive or negative?''

While Acharya uses the art of shadows, Desai lights candles and uses wax as a scrying aid to predict the future. It's a method that requires steadying a lit candle over a bowl of water at a slant such that the wax drips and floats as it solidifies into diverse shapes and textures. "Like spotting a cloud shaped like an elephant or aeroplane etc., I see energies in a bowl and interpret the symbols and intuitively assign meanings to them. Just as Nostradamus predicted his own death looking at patterns in the water."

But Sriram credits this thought to 'pattern recognition', our evolutionary capability for seeing realistic imagery in abstract forms. "It's a good, creative exercise, but even if there is a pattern, there doesn't have to be a correlation." In his defence, Chhaya Shastri Babubhai says, "People didn't believe Nostradamus at his time, but so many of his predictions have come true." To which, Sriram counters with the theory that people retroactively lap up the 14th-century French seer's predictions without using their mind. "Nostradamus wrote about two towers burning down. People thought he was talking about the 9/11 Twin Towers. But they could've been any towers...today, there are wilful demolitions of skyscrapers. It could also just be the ramblings of a drunk, old guy."

It's still the case where believers find the rationalists "too left-brained and stubborn" to accept the metaphysical. "Only when there is a balance of creativity and logic in a person, they're open to accept something that can't be codified," says Desai, also claiming that many who don't agree to her practice in public, come to her in private for readings.

According to Dr Anita Rane, a believer and Head Of Department of Ancient Indian Culture, History and Archaeology at St Xavier's College, Mumbai, "There's no point of arguing with 'fools' (rationalists). I always tell them 'wait till you get your experience. Only then you will accept the astral world'." The 50-year-old rattles off a list of predictions that came true for her. An astrologer, Narayana Shinde told her she has a brain tumor, but will recover, predicted her future husband's name and also when she would marry. Astrologer Todkar Maharaj told her husband, that his future mother-in-law will share the same name as his, Sunil, and that he'll marry a girl with the same birth date, 29th. All these predictions came true. The most uncanny one is when mendicant, who had come by begging, told her grandmother she would die with pomp, but her sister's death would go fairly unnoticed. "We burst crackers and had over 100 people attending my granny's funeral, but her sister died in an old age home cremated by her sons in the wee hours of the morning without informing the rest of the family."

Rane also supports her case with facts from history. Before laying siege on Pratapgarh and killing Shivaji, she says, Afzal Khan from the Adil Shahi dynasty consulted an astrologer who predicted this move would result in his doomsday. But the Mughal went ahead, only to end up being killed. "I don't believe in any Tom, Dick and Harry claiming to be an astrologer, but the ones I do believe in, do it for free or take whatever you give them."

Nayak, however, delivers a challenge sealed with a smirk: "I place a currency note in an envelope and ask the astrologer to predict the serial number on it. Because opening the envelope is an act of future, right? A simple, foolproof test that astrologers till now have miserably failed." Sriram is even ready to mollycoddle the psychic. "I'm okay if they want to create a mutually agreeable test. If it goes beyond making generic predictions like 'your life will become increasingly difficult or a relative will die next year'. Their predictions are very much rooted in reality, and nothing 'astral' which means they can be tested and that the test can also be tangible."

And so, the argument continues...