He can read your face like a book

When I told my mother I met a certain Dadhichi Toth, vedic astrologer and face reader who, like her, was a great believer in the guru Ramana Maharishi, she wanted to know everything: “Did you ask him when you’re getting married?” Not satisfied with a daughter’s Vedic low downs being kept disappointingly general — “He said I had a social nose, okay!” — she grilled me about what he said, perhaps more thoroughly than I grilled the bald, French beard-sporting, affable Australian man who, in the last 27 years, has woven his life around the esoteric.

I went to meet him with a fellow journalist, a former colleague and good friend. (Two months ago, we had left our thumb prints with a naadi reader, but sorting through some 3 million papyrus leaves to find those of two eager beaver journos takes time). Later on, when Toth said to us, “Recently, you’ve been trying to get your naadi read”, we were both stumped. He couldn’t have known that — unless he had hacked into our email. But on the first day of his India tour to launch an astrological series by Mills, it seemed unlikely.

Toth is in India till September 30. Sitting at a table at The Park hotel in Connaught Place, New Delhi, grabbing a quick bite before his flight to Mumbai, Dadhichi had barely had the time to read the Vedic charts of a handful of politicians. Manmohan Singh — “He’s a shrewd but good human being.” Apparently Dr Singh needs to be especially careful about his health. And Rahul Gandhi? “I don’t like him!” Rahul’s chart took Dadhichi an hour to read. It’s complicated. Not least of all because of that old parallel with the Kennedys and the genealogical link with tragedy — “Solar eclipses can affect the leaders of the country.” What about Sushma Swaraj? And he replied, “Isn’t she the singer?”

Dadhichi doesn’t restrict his readings to the animate. He also reads the charts of the nation, and had predicted the Sikkim earthquake. One of the Mills and Boons guys said, “He told me two months ago about affliction in the Northeast and mentioned the mobilisation of forces.” Big-eyed and almost conspiratorial, Dadhichi moved on to hint at elections and warned of a change in the planetary cycle on August 18, 2013 that will herald a political shift. The cycle will end on June 19, 2014.

After the planets and politics spiel, I asked him to read my Capricorn friend’s face, knowing of course, that my turn will be next. Disclosing what he said about her face — apart from a beautiful ‘transverse crease’ — her past, and what the stars predict is not my egg to fry, but let’s say he was accurate in matters of the heart, down to the little detail of a husband two years younger than herself.

It was my turn next. I pushed my hair back, jutted face forward and tried to be expressionless. He didn’t need my birth date because he was feeding enough off vibe and intuition. Salient points: I’ve been trying hard to measure my words, and that’s a new one for me. I will have problems with eyesight, right one especially, so should not work too late. I will be famous for my art that will have to do with observing human nature. I should play an instrument or doodle (strange, the karmic healer told me to stay away from a profession that requires me to use my hands and I’d lamented, “But I write!” and she’d said that’s to do with the head, stay away from pottery/embroidery/ that sort of thing.)

At one point Dadhichi said, “You’re a city girl but not really a city girl”. I misunderstood his accent and thought, lord, why is he calling me a silly girl? But the reading that threw me off, the thing I didn’t tell my mother, and will perhaps be a fool to fully disclose here, was his piercing, almost snap judgement-like analysis of my relationships. He read my patterns like a mirror. I haven’t yet processed fully what he said about what lies ahead, but right then

I needed to splash my face, and my poor right eye, with ice water.

After the interview, my friend and I kept sitting at the table, at The Park in a daze. There were all these things to chew over. We ordered a club sandwich and another coffee. Waste of money? Naah. After all, at least the one good thing Dadhichi did say was that we were both going to be very rich.