Saturday, September 20, 2008

The parrot fortune teller




Picture courtesy : Another blog

I’ve always had a split mind on fortune telling. Like, take the daily horoscopes in the newspapers or on your TataSky. If you read them at the end of the day, you tend to relate to it, irrespective of the fact that it might NOT actually be so. On the contrary, if you read it before your day starts, you will not think twice about it. Rest assured, I read the horoscopes myself.

It so happened that today after college one of my friends spotted a parrot fortune teller and brought him over to his place. The fortune teller charged 21 INR per person. My friend went ahead first. The fortune teller took the cash and coaxed the bird out of its cage. The parrot trotted over to the set of cards, kept inside open booklets, placed before him and while the teller chanted something, it took off the cards one by one and laid them down, before taking one booklet aside and going back inside the cage. As the fortune teller spoke in the local language, I had to translate it. I don’t know if what he told about my friend was completely true or otherwise, but it was quite fascinating to listen to him. One of the girls went next. The parrot picked up a card like last time. The teller informed that her fortune was so huge that he would have to use shells (kinda like the conch, I have no idea what you call it in English) and then would have to read her palm to tell her fortune. And of course, that it would cost 250 INR. My friend refused to go ahead with it.

Next went another guy. Done with translating his, I too took out the cash from my wallet thinking, ‘What the heck! Lets give it a shot.’

Now, would you know! The parrot selected a booklet with NO cards in it. The guy was like, “Your fortune is too big and complicated to tell just by this. You too have to do it with the shells.”

I, being the ever suspicious girl that I am, say “What? You said the same thing to the other girl!”.
He replies, “She got a pack with full God cards. You have NO card in yours. The fortune telling will cost you 250 Rupees. It is a good day today. Try it out”.
I refuse. “250 Rupees is too much. “
“How much are you willing to pay?”.


He sees my hesitation.
He coaxes the parrot out again, shuffles the booklets and asks it pick one up again. Surprisingly, it AGAIN picked up the same one with no cards.
“You have the look and the glow of Goddess Lakshmi in your face. (Which, I think, he said just because of my complexion.) I can see that you are interested. You want to know. You have questions you need answers for. I can see things in your left eye. Don’t say no.”

Yeah right. Play around with my psyche and expect me NOT to go ahead with it? So, there I went. Shelling out 200 INR. I took the 9 shells he offered and threw them down three times. He then took a look at my hand and started talking fortune.
I got down to listening it, while translating snippets of it to my friend who was with me.

Now, even though most of it was general, I was mighty surprised about some of the stuff he said. They were entirely true, I tell you. If you know me well, you’d know that I am NOT a girl to be fooled easily...
True, he might have just asked the parrot using a code word or something to pick a booklet with no cards so that he could draw easy cash from me, but then, what he actually told me, made me think twice about the fortune telling stuff. Certain things he said were so damn true. He spoke for about 20-30 minutes. I was listening with deliberation.


At the end of the day, do I regret spending that cash? I was saving it for something, but no. I don’t entirely regret it. It was worth it. It could be my once in a life thing with a fortune teller. You never know!

8 comments:

Cognoscis said...

Interesting...

Most of my family members i.e., grand parents, parents, aunts, uncles etc., believe in fortune telling. Naturally I have been told my fortune lot many times.

The science, if you may, has been around for many many years. And its not very abstract either. They do have patterns. I mean, if get your horoscope done by different people, the results do tally, about 80% to 90%... The fact that its been computerized also adds to the curiosity that it creates in my mind.

Although it speaks of fortune, I do like the way it describes one's personality. Thats what I have always been fascinated about. Like it says what would be my mood swings or priorities and many other stuff.

But knowing your fortune, i think, will tune our mind to expect them. I have had such experiences with the daily horoscope. So, its better NOT to know.. :D

Anonymous said...

Thaja, all these are interesting na? Sometime in second puc, I was so into astrology that I wanted to take it up as a career. Serious. It's amazing how they do it. Some true, some fake. I think I'm going to visit one soon, to ask about my love life and career path :D
Not a parrot fortune teller though. Btw, even I think that horoscopes seem relevant at the end of the day!
Cheers

Unknown said...

fortune telling is something that i have tried a lot many times. and everytime, i have come to the conclusion that though these fortune tellers do tell you somethings that are very true about your persona and character, they can hardly tell you anything substantial about the future. and thats where their whole purpose fails. so after all the anticipation with which you show them your palms and in my case dread, you hardly get what you really wanted, the knowledge of the unknown, the slight hints of the things to come but all you get is a litany of your character fine points and your woes, your drawbacks and your minimal strenghts. but i am not taking anything away from them by branding them as rubbish but i would say that such an excercise is frivolous and most of the times delusional. and let me tell you, we teens love delusions. and they , the palmists,know it. they do have some kind of alchemy behind it which i can never grasp but the whole idea of fortune telling is predicting and not speculating. and if you can't predict, then you are not qutie futile.

though my encounters with them have always been quite entertaining and embarrassing at the same time (one of them told me to stay away from the girl whom i was after in front of my parents, which was quite true to an extent), so i always advise people to go for it but always with a discretionary warning. :)

Shiv Narayan Gautam said...

Interesting.

Very in fact.

What i've experienced in all these things is that they say somethings that are common to most of the people. And you actually relate it with you.

I dont actually believe in these sort but i dont say that they are not true. They might be and they might not.

At the end what matters is your belief.

:)

Akshatha Hegde said...

Hahahahaha. :p
Cute parrot. I have its clone back home but he's useless, I tell you.

Wait a minute. 200 bucks for random card picking? $$$$!!!
Must train him..must..

I once saw a parrot pick out this card for a man that happened to be Yama's card..you know, the god of death. You should have seen the look on his face. :|

If you know me well, you’d know that I am NOT a girl to be fooled easily...

Theja..enamma idu.. :|

Oh. I get it.
Heh. :D

FlowerPowerBoi said...

You carry 200 rupees with you...

You are rich-ness...

If I were that rich, I'd pay a lot of people to tell me about my future, because then I'd be rich and I wouldn't care about it...

Right now, I'm really sleep deprived and everything seems funny...

Boneywasawarriorwayayix said...

He fleeced money out of you. Period.

purplestorm said...

I see that you're all more or less of the same opinion.

:|

Ah well..