TheJupiterInMySeventhHouse
Sulekha 17 September 2001
The Jupiter in My Seventh House
I was asked to undergo training under the guidance of Padi. A long time ago. I was to learn the funda of telegraphy from him. He was then the chief of the telegraph circuits going in and out of Bombay. He had several thousands of machines in his charge. Miles of stories used to appear on the punched tapes. Some for the news agencies and many for individuals. Millions of messages were distributed from the telegraph offices. Internet yet to be discovered, five-star hotels were content running the ticker lines in real time in the lobbies. Many guests loved to grab the oven-fresh news from the teleprinters directly. We had been issued with identity cards and passes to visit any installation, any time, anywhere for the so-called maintenance. They included sensitive spots like the airports, the harbour, railheads and other entertainment locations such as cinema halls, the stadium or the racecourse as well.
Padi never professed to be an astrologer. He did not read tarot cards. Nor the horror-scopes. He never believed in the influence of the planets on the everyday life of the common man. If Saturn was in your third house, Sun in the seventh and Jupiter in the eleventh, he is most likely to advise -- go, find yourself an apartment. He did not practise numerology or tasseography (art of telling fortune from teacups). He did not maintain an archive to consult on the lineage of his visitors. In fact he never ventured to read palms nor give forecasts for anybody.
He would occasionally drop remarks. Whenever we had a fault on a telegraph line, Padi would look at the symptoms, study the reports briefly and would declare that the fault was in Sholapur adjacent to the ninth pole beyond milestone 437. Of course, he used to be right. He never explained how he was interpolating.
Then I was taking permission, one day, to leave office early without assigning any reason. Padi casually remarked, "You are going to Church Gate to make a booking to Delhi. The second-class seats are sold out for the Thursday Frontier. The seventy-two rupees you have in your pocket is inadequate to buy a first class ticket. You will therefore proceed to Victoria Terminus and buy a seat on the Punjab Mail." Things happened exactly as he had listed. It was then I recognised the brahm-rishi (a great soul of knowledge) in Padi and spontaneously appointed him my guru (teacher).
Komal was drafting a tricky explanation to an audit objection. Suddenly Padi dropped everything. He started to muse loudly, "What is his name? Looks like... Santanam. Who is he?" Komal said she had not heard of anybody by that name.
"You may not have," said an obliging Padi, "but I have heard his whistles outside this window. Very often -- in the evenings. And I have seen you in the pillion. What is important is, that just now," Padi volunteered, "his transfer order is getting typed. He is being shifted to the refineries in Assam." Komal swung into action immediately. She ran to the nearest phone and cried. The transfer couldn't be prevented. Komal has not forgiven Padi. She thinks that Padi engineered that transfer. And Santanam did not escape Komal either. Eventually they tied the knot and spoke to me from Dibrugarh.
Whenever he was required to balance the account books, Padi never toiled. He opened the books at random, put his finger somewhere -- at the exact spot where the anomaly was hiding. He used to advise us, "You do not have to know what a + b whole squared is. When you need to know if a proposed answer is right or wrong, have one look at the candidate. His face will tell you if he has fudged the figures."
It was quite after some time that I discovered Padi was a postgraduate who had majored in complex variables. At a time when the state lotteries were gaining popularity, Padi had an irresistible compulsion to write long series of digits alongside the lottery announcements. For a while I ignored it. But later it transpired that those trains of digits represented the identities of the winning tickets in the following draw. They were evaluated on the basis of regression analyses on the vital stats of the winners of the earlier draws. It is needless to point out that Padi was right in every instance that I bothered to verify. If he had wished he could have become a crorepati several times over. He could have purchased all those tickets that were destined to win the prize money. But he didn't and this remained an unresolved mystery.
But not for long. Padi said, "You must be destined to become a crorepati. That shall have been written in your karma. Only then does it work." Looking at the confusion on my face, he observed, "You will not understand now. You are too young for it." I dismissed him at that time.
As my training was coming to a close, Padi disclosed many of his techniques to me. That, I guess, was his style of blessing me. One day we were waiting for the Minister to arrive and inaugurate a new facility at the Fountain Telegraph Office. Suddenly Padi said, "How you will react to a developing situation, I can guess with reasonable accuracy. Because I know how exactly you will respond to specific stimuli. To call that astrology is an insult -- if astrology is indeed an exact science."
I asked if he was intending to dismiss astrology as a pseudo-science.
"I did not say that," Padi replied, "there is an obvious conflict that you people do not appreciate." That was interesting to me. I started to pay attention to him.
Padi said, "A candidate has to be recursively classified to receive a forecast." What does he mean by that? "A forecast can be told only to that individual who is predicted to become aware of the same."
That does not make me any wiser, I told Padi. To me it sounded like a conundrum.
"Just as somebody predicts you will be well provided for or you shall receive honours, it must also be admitted that you are destined to be aware of what the future holds for you. If that is not so, no matter what you hear as a forecast -- need not work for you. Just because it does not have to be necessarily the same as what you heard. More often you are told just what you wanted to hear in the first instance! And that is only the beginning of your troubles."
"Let me try to explain in layman's terms," Padi continued. "Suppose I tell you that you are to going to meet with an accident on the third right turn and you also believe it. That alone is not sufficient for the prediction to come true. Since you are aware of what would happen at the third right turn, you may make a premature maneuvre at the second right instead. The hopefully waiting lorry driver at the third right is now disappointed. The predicted accident does not take place. Now tell me -- can we therefore declare the prediction is unreliable? That really is the conflict. You also believed faithfully in what had been foretold -- yet it did not come true.
"Imagine someone forecasts that you shall win in KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati?, the TV show) and you don't. Does that not amount to cheating? A breach of contract? A jyotish (astrologer) is obliged by contract to tell you the truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth -- for the fees he received. Say, he may, the sooth but truth better may it be! Any violation shall constitute a cognisable offence."
I was naturally confused. I asked, "Need we not thank ourselves for having prevented an accident from happening? Imagine how many lives we could have saved."
Padi would proceed to explain, "If you have pre-empted the accident by taking the precaution, you are saved, though the prediction itself proved wrong. It cannot be forgiven. If you had proceeded to the third right as you had originally planned, the lorry driver would have been pleased to meet you. Since it is unlikely and you would have avoided the accident anyway, the so called science of astrology has to fail more often than one would estimate. It is rather strange but true. Very often the art of forecasting is blamed for no fault on its part."
"That is why it is necessary for a candidate to be classified as knowledgeable in any prediction concerning him. This has to be confirmed before initiating anything else." It was therefore why Padi did not volunteer to issue predictions indiscriminately.
A study of an individual by itself may take some effort, he clarified further. "If you carefully examine the epics, you will notice very few had been privileged to know of their futures, apart from the past and the present. Dronacharya was aware that the Kurukshetra battle was to be fought eventually. So demanded from Ekalavya the fee of his thumb for giving him training in archery. Dronacharya was supposed to have imparted lessons to Ekalavya in absentia. He obviously planned that Ekalavya should not become a marksman to be reckoned with during the battle.
"I guess Dronacharya must also have been aware that the outcome of the battle would not have been altered by this lone marksman. But knowing the future he could contain the damages.
"Maricha was also aware of his future. He considered it a privilege to be killed by Rama's arrow than to suffer humiliation in the courts of Ravana. These are chronicled instances. Unchronicled are many, naturally. Ahalya was cursed to become a stone. Durvasa cursed Shakuntala for her inattention. In both cases, the victims were told when and how their curses would be annulled and thus they were in the complete knowledge of their future. Obviously they had no need to consult an astrologer to learn what was in store for them.
"That is what I am preaching. Should you be eligible to know your future, nothing can prevent it from happening. At best, being pre-warned, you can relax and be prepared to receive what was destined for you on the basis of your karma."
I did not agree. "To resign ultimately to fate is just a means of escape. Rationalists would not admit that."
"Too bad," Padi continued. "You are not qualified to receive this wisdom from me -- just now."
"Then why, tell me, should you be attempting to wash my brain already?" I asked impatiently.
"So that one day you will understand and proclaim to the world what this principle is."
So here I am, dear readers, to let you know of Padi, my guru. I have now understood the significance of his wisdom. Astrology, be advised, is not for everybody. Certainly not for those who look into the bavishyavani (periodical forecast) columns dutifully every morning. It is meant for others, who, anyway, know what is in store for them today, tomorrow or the day after. These individuals will not bother to consult the bavishyavani. In short, astrology does not add anything useful to the lives of ordinary mortals. Others care a damn. In other words, nobody gains by any astrology. QED.
That said, I have to add a footnote here. On the last day of every month, Padi's wife came to the office and dutifully collected his pay. For, Padi was not to be trusted with money. He was known to be systematically and predictably losing everything he had at the Mahalakshmi racecourse. He knew everything about the horses he was betting on. Only those horses were not endorsed within the karma of Padi, nor did they return what they owed him. Too bad.
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The Jupiter in My Seventh House by tinmoorthy
..Whenever we had a fault on a telegraph line, Padi would look at the symptoms, study the reports briefly and would declare that the fault was in Sholapur adjacent to the ninth pole beyond milestone 437. Of course, he used to be right. .
Sep 18 2001: sandy : India abounds in layman-intellectualism of the kind exhibited by Padi in this story... ordinary people with profound knowledge, often toiling away in modest jobs. This tale reminded me of similar people I have encountered in my life....Nice.
Sep 17 2001: chiaroscuro : ..remarkable..well argued..
Sep 19 2001: w@w : Nice!!