Page 26 of The Love Thief

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN My Three-Thousand- Year-Old Prophecy

“Madam, we are so sorry to inform you that you are not in your right mind” my translator said.

“What the fuck?” I responded, and then hoped like hell no one else in the room understood what I had just said.

I was seated in a hard, wooden chair facing a large table that had bundles of old palm leaves filled with tiny hieroglyphic-like writing on them, and held together with some form of string.

For more than two hours, I had been slowly going through the process of finding the leaf on which my past, present, and future had been written more than three thousand years earlier by enlightened sages, assisted by Lord Shiva, creating predictions to help people find their destiny.

“Madam, the leaf says that you are not currently in your right mind.” Okay , I thought, I know that, but how does the leaf know that?

I haven’t been in my right mind for the last two months, probably longer.

So how did I end up here? In the very south of South India?

In a small, cement block room with a young priest reading Old Tamil predictions off a palm leaf that were being interpreted by a Hinglish -speaking man named Babu?

Upon learning the gory details of my recent past, while we were having a spa day at Ananda, my new best friend Maya had decided that what I most needed, to get my life back on track, was a Nadi reading.

Which is how I found myself a few hours outside of Pondicherry in a room framed by large, colorful portraits of Hindu Gods and Goddesses illuminated by a single flickering, buzzing fluorescent light bulb as I listened to details about my life, most of which weren’t even available on the internet.

Fortunately, Maya had arranged for Dr. Q, the dapper European scholar who oversees the Nadi reading service, to sit next to me specifically to interpret the interpreter. After a bit of back and forth between Dr. Q and Babu, with a lot of head-bobbing happening on both sides, Dr. Q laughed out loud.

“Madam Holly,” he explained. “What he means is that you are in a period of your life where you do not know your life’s purpose and you are not supposed to know this at this time.”

Learning that “you are not in your right mind” really meant “you don’t know your purpose” was a big relief to me.

Good that Dr. Q translated for me; it was definitely a true statement, but then I was saddened to hear that the leaves weren’t about to fill me in on what’s coming next for me career-wise.

Maybe the leaves were not that familiar with American girls who work but would like to become “homely girls.”

My itinerary that day had been decided at Ananda when Maya borrowed an inkpad from the front desk and made an imprint of my left thumb on a notecard to send off to Dr. Q. She initiated the search for my “bundle” with the details of my life.

Maya explained that she’d had a spectacular reading a few years earlier, where she was given in-depth information on her most recent past life (and the bad karma she had accrued, and how to do a special puja to erase it).

She was literally giddy recalling the details they gave her about the coming decades related to money, health, career, and her love life, along with pertinent information on her parents, including their names, social status, health issues, and more.

At the end of her reading, she was asked if she was willing to hear the date, time, and circumstance of her death, which she agreed to, but didn’t share that with me. Whew!

This Nadi reading sounded like exactly the kind of information to reboot my life and I bellowed out a huge, resounding, “YES! Maya, please! ASAP!”

Maya went back to New Delhi, and a week later, she sent me a text message that my bundle had been found. She added that it was very auspicious that this happened so quickly. “Very unusual,” she said. She was so excited that she offered to escort me to Tamil Nadu for the reading.

I did a quick google search and discovered that Pondicherry is a charming, former French colony on the Bay of Bengal.

It was described as having a New Orleans look and vibe to it.

Half the town was a mixture of restored and decaying early-twentieth-century colonial architecture that still retained its strong French influence, while the other half was very much Indian.

“Yes, Maya,” I texted. “I would love that!”

She quickly wrote back saying she would make all the arrangements, be my personal escort, and I was to be her guest as a way to further entice me to accept her consulting offer.

Maya had arranged a car to meet us the morning after we arrived in Pondicherry, to drive the nearly three hours for my reading in the small village of Vaitheeswarankoil, population ten thousand.

Now, that’s an extraordinary true friend!

Unlike California freeways, this part of the world is knitted together through two-lane roads (mostly paved), with rice paddy fields on either side. Seeing farmers wearing broad-brimmed straw hats, leaning on hoes while chatting on their mobiles was something that, I admit, surprised me.

We passed many small square blockhouses and small snack shops offering dozens of varieties of chips with crazy hot spices.

Brightly clad sari-wearing women were bent over in the space directly leading to the front entryway of their blockhouse homes.

Maya explained that they were performing their morning ritual of pouring colored sand into intricate geometric yantras placed where a welcome mat would normally go.

Known as rangoli, these yantras are a sacred form of art in India.

Each yantra offered a diagram of a particular frequency’s vibration to provide another day of protection and blessings on their families, and their dogs, goats, and chickens, many of which lived in the house with them.

Before we stepped through the door of Dr. Q’s establishment, we smelled the inviting incense.

He warmly greeted us and offered us freshly made masala chai, which we gladly accepted after the long journey.

He and Maya had a quick catch-up talk before she explained she was going out for a few hours with the driver to do a puja at the Vaidyanathaswamy Temple where it is believed the Hindu Gods of healing reside.

Her favorite auntie was suffering from gout.

Maya planned to send her some ancient healing energy since it was believed that you could be cured by giving away crystal salt and black pepper in this temple.

“Holly,” she said softly as she wrapped me in her bangle-filled arms. “Today will change your life in a good way. It is likely your session could take up to three hours. Take lots of notes and I promise to return for you before your session is complete.”

As Dr. Q walked me into the next room, he said, “Holly, it’s so wonderful to put a name and a face to your thumbprint.”

The look on my face must have been one of utter confusion, which made him laugh.

“Until just now the only thing I knew about you was that you were a female friend of Maya’s. As part of our process, we only have the seeker’s thumbprint . . . never a name, gender, or vital information. This is how we keep the process pure,” he said with an obvious sense of much pride.

While the priest (the reader) and his translator were doing a prayer and ritual to prepare for our session, Dr. Q went on to explain how things would proceed.

First, he asked that I write down my first name, my mother’s first name, and my father’s first name, then write beside each name the number of letters in each.

I shared with Dr. Q that I didn’t know the name of my father, and he said that was okay; we would discover his name in the reading. That is a heart-stopper!

It had never occurred to me that I would learn something—anything—about my father from this reading.

He told me that they would begin by asking me a series of “yes” or “no” questions.

As long as I answered “Yes,” they would go on to the next question.

If I answered “No,” that meant they needed to move on to the next leaf.

He also said I was never to offer any additional information except “Yes” or “No,” and that the reader did not know anything about me—not my name, age, birthday, or country of origin.

Nothing. Zip. Nada. Once my leaf was found, they would provide the information on the leaf and when they finished, at that point, I could ask specific questions if they hadn’t already been answered.

Dr. Q walked me to the reading room and introduced me to Guruji, the reader, and the translator, who both slightly smiled and welcomed me with their palms pressed together in front their chests in a traditional namaste.

The priest, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, picked up the first bundle, looked at the top leaf and spoke in a language I have never heard. Then Babu translated what the priest had said into English, in a heavy accent, which I strained to comprehend.

And so, we began.

“You work as an artist, painter, or writer?”

“No,” I said as I also shook my head from side to side. New leaf.

“You were born in November or December?” “No.”

New leaf.

“You are a college graduate?” “Yes.”

“You are an employee of a large enterprise?” “No.”

New leaf.

“You work as a healer?” “No.”

New leaf.

“Your mother has three children.” “No.”

New leaf

“Your mother is named after a saint?” “No.”

New leaf.

You were born in March or April?” “No.”

New leaf.

This process went on for more than a half hour. Sometimes there would be five yeses in a row, and then, the dreaded “No” would come and Guruji was on to the next leaf. I was beginning to think that there was no leaf for me.

Dr. Q had warned there was no guarantee that everyone had a leaf, or that the correct bundle with my leaf would be found and that, if that happened, it meant this wasn’t the correct time to have a reading.