Late Tuesday evening, a group of five priests walked into one of South Mumbai’s poshest addresses: Niladri on Napean Sea Road. Servants ran out to help them with their baggage. Despite being tired after the long journey from Parappanangadi, a small town in Kerala’s Malappuram district, the leader Unnikrishna Panicker told them not to bother. Vijay Mallya soon came and escorted them in.
“Around 2.30am the priests began elaborate preparations for the Ashtamangalya Prashnam. No one from the staff at Niladri was allowed to help with the arrangements. Panicker and his team did it all, and the puja began at 4am,” said a source. “Dressed in traditional veshti and angavastram, Mallya and son Siddharth attended the puja.”
With no signs of his troubles abating, the Kingfisher Airlines chairman was reportedly advised to conduct this ritual. He then sent an emissary to Parappanangadi to meet Panicker.
“The astrologer was formally invited with offerings. After noting the time, date and place, including the words used for invitation, Panicker decided on the date and muhurat for the ritual,” the source added.
Panicker is not just any astrologer-priest. He is the personal astrologer of Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, former Sri Lanka president Chandrika Kumaratunga, former Sri Lanka prime minister Ranil Vikramasinghe, and a host of businessmen, film stars and politicians.
Kumaratunga had even made Panicker the cultural advisor to the government during her tenure — an equivalent to the rank of her cabinet ministers. After surviving an attempt on her life in December 1999, Kumaratunga became a devotee and sought his advice before taking any major decisions.
When DNA contacted Panicker’s home town it was confirmed that he had indeed gone to Mallya’s residence in Mumbai for an Ashtamangalya Prashnam.
A priest from Panicker’s home town said, “Success depends on a thorough knowledge of the Prashna Marga, a high degree of intelligence, great powers of observation and keen intuition, which can only be expected from a person leading an austere, godly lifestyle.”
“As the subject of Prashnam is something that is connected with temple and presiding deities, only the very best astrologers can conduct it. Usually this is done in the form of a discussion among several scholarly astrologers so that chances of mistakes would be minimised — the omission or error of one astrologer might be picked upon by another. This is why Panicker has taken along a team of some of the best astrologers in Parappanangadi,” he added.
Calls and messages to Mallya went unanswered. His spokesperson, Prakash Mirpuri’s reply to DNA’s text message query on the ritual was “Complete nonsense.”
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