Saturday, September 02, 2006

Destiny's children...

It has struck me as strange, this fascination that a lot of people in our country (and outside as well, actually) have with astrology, palmistry and the likes. Is it just a desire to peep into the future? To avoid the bad, to anticipate the good? And the even stranger contradiction in the fact that we ultimately believe that fate is the decision maker. If fate is the decision maker, then of what use is this future gazing?

The only logic that I can think of is that of easy blaming. Isn't it extremely convenient and effective to lay the responsibility of every screwed up thing in our life upon a few stars and planets a million miles away? Or on the convoluted ridges and shapes on your hand, regardless of what you do with those hands? I am not discounting the scientific rationale behind astrology here. It's just that I have never been really able to figure out this rationale.

It's sometimes hard to believe that if your relationships are not working out, then it's the "manglik" effect to blame (poor Mars, a few million people everyday hold it responsible for their marital woes). Or that it's "shani" or "rahu-ketu" playing the roulette with your professional life, or things like that. The reason why it is so hard to believe all this is also perhaps because we have these concepts of rahu-ketu etc. only in this part of the world. There are enough people outside India whose lives are not particularly going smoothly, but they are pretty much unaware of these concepts. Though these days they are making up for the lack of this Oriental wisdom by resorting to numerology and palmistry.

Maybe someday I will figure out. I just wish my stars could tell me when I would...

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