Pragya Prasad is playing her cards right

How does a 21-year-old react when people sometimes twice  her age confide their deepest personal problems to her? That was Pragya Prasad’s dilemma a few years ago when she started out on her journey of reading tarot cards.

Says Pragya, “Initially, I found it strange and it took a bit of getting used to but it made me realise that a tarot card reader has a dual role — of fortune teller and psychological counsellor. It has made me non-judgemental and a more open person.”

27-year-old Pragya, who resides in Nashik, has been reading fortunes ever since she was 13 years old. A self-taught person, she picked up a book on the tarot as a teenager which taught her basic principles which she practised initially on a deck of ordinary playing cards.

“After 14 years of experience all I can say is that a successful prediction depends on your study of the subject and the depth of your intuition,” she says.

People come to Pragya to resolve all sorts of existential situations in their lives. “A tarot card reader must not only read the cards correctly but also soothe fears and allay worries a client has in order to help the other person,” she says. 

Pragya reads the tarot after meditating seriously on the spread she has drawn for a person. While she usually likes her subject to be present for a live reading, on occasion she also delivers advice over the phone after people relate their situations to her and she draws a deck from her special  Voyager cards for them.

“I can usually decipher the situation but sometimes when I cannot, I tell the client honestly about it. Such a situation invariably means that it is not time yet for me to know the answer to their problems,” she says candidly.

“My biggest high is when my clients get back to me saying that my predictions have turned out true. Yet, given people intense situations, the biggest compliment I can get is when people say they have felt better after  talking to me,” says this young psychological counsellor’.