Horoscopic Temptations

I have been toying with the idea of taking a look at my horoscope. One part of me is dying to know what has been predicted for me by the unique planetary alignment at the time of my birth. Will some rich relative on the verge of kicking the bucket decide to make me his heir after miraculously forgiving my abominable sin of wearing low-rise jeans that flaunt the butt-crack? Will some Hollywood Director chance upon my blog during coffee break and ask me to write the screenplay for the movie of the millennium? And also send me tickets to California? By First Class? With Penthouse accommodation and car on arrival? Caviar and Champagne later? (And so the dream unfolds infinitely on...).

My rational half, which staunchly believes in free will, protests against such a weakness as wanting to know the future. It boasts the courage to take each day as it comes with the sublime and the stinking. Besides, there is also the clammy fear of finding something scary in your future- stock market bunglings, brain tumors, psychotic lovers. Even more scary than finding something scary is to find nothing great at all. Imagine being told that you will spend the rest of your life in stalemate, swatting flies and that the biggest achievement you will ever have is the 49% you scored in a Math paper, ten years ago? Thus, better to stay in hallucinatory dreams and hopes of imagined greatness than to have them confirmed or negated. Let sleeping dogs lie, in my opinion.

Most people would laugh at me. Because I would be one of the few people in my community who have not had a look at this "sacred piece of information" by now. The first thing that is written on the birth of a child is his natal chart. It will have a detailed account of the main events in his life, with comprehensive interpretations of his choices, actions, decisions and their consequences. Many of my relatives are firm believers in the horoscope and many an astrogloger makes a fat buck off them on a regular basis, reading their natal charts and predicting such things as when to build a house, when to change jobs, what to wear to the next job interview and what sort of transportation to take to the venue. Wonder of all wonders, it will even tell you whom to marry!

I am not refuting that astrology is a science. Crudely put, we are all made up of matter and the planets do have some kind of pull or push on us depending on the variations in our chemical compostions. From what I have read on the subject, there is some serious gravitation, levitation and manipulation involved. I am just against slavishly living my life according to what is predicted for my future. Take for example, this uncle of mine who does not go out on Tuesdays as he is just not a Tuesday-guy as per his horoscope. He wears a fat onyx on his index finger and yellow on Wednesdays and eats lentils cooked in clarified butter for good luck. He also does not operate machinery or have anything to do with dogs as both augur trouble for him, according to his horoscope. It is a pain when he visits. He will fidget in the car since it is "machinery" and during every car ride, he is covinced it will crash. As for dogs, he freaks out so much around them that even the most docile mutt will get agitated and will contemplate taking a swipe at his butt.

A few years back, I heard this true story. A man went to his astrologer to have a look at his natal chart before taking some important decision. The astrologer went ashen faced; he saw a terrible disaster in the man's immediate future. He said that the man would be involved in a car accident and would sustain terrible injuries. His wife almost got a cardiac arrest hearing this ( wonder if that was predicted for her). She would not let him out of the house and every minute of every hour of every day, they bit nails and tore hairs together about this Godawful thing that was foretold for him. He took leave from work and stayed at home in this wonderful state of paranoid hysteria for about six months. Then one day, he fell down the stairs and broke bones and injured his spine.

So where is the car and the crash as was predicted? Here's the creepy climax- he had stepped on his son's toy car at the top of the stairs and that was what had brought him whizzing down to his doom...

So there is truth to astrology after all and in the hands of a skilled astrologer, the predictions can be amazingly accurate. Which brings me back to the point I made- ignorance is bliss in these matters for sure.

I pity relatives who are so cramped that they have to consult the horoscope for the tiniest of tiny matters. But if there is anyone I detest, it is the relatives who go to astrologers with YOUR birth details to find out what YOU have in store. Then, they snoop around you with raised eyebrows and knowing looks. Most of the time, you cannot even say if it is awe or fear. Perhaps they have found out that you are bi-sexual or that you used to have a whiff of pot once in a while? These damned horoscopes can also tell your past! Of late, two or three people in my family have been fidgeting around me and have been dropping broad hints about my horoscope and about "the time having come" or something as enigmatic and irritating as that. Thankfully, they are smiling, so I know they haven't seen that I shall shed blood or do time.

My aunt let slip that it has to do with "writing" and "being read by many all over the world". As much as I want to believe it is about a Best Seller in the making that will be gunning for the Booker a few years from now, I have a weird feeling it could be my humble blog. Well, I am "writing", so the first part is true. And since it is on the Internet, I am sure three people in Zimbabwe, two in Australia, ten in Bangalore and six in the U.S can be considered a world wide reader base. Three plus two plus ten plus six equals many people. So there is part two of the prediction.

Actually, there is a way of knowing for sure if the prediction is about my blog or some serious contribution to Literature that lurks in my brain at the moment, waiting for the right time to be born. You see, I have my horoscope which was written at the time of my birth, sitting in my locker. It has been lying there for the past 29 years.

I have never read it.

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." -Matthew 26:41