You meet a stranger. He tells you your name, age, profession, name of your parents and spouse, number of children, tales of past life exploits and your future prospects. All this from ancient palm leaf manuscripts, written at least 2,000 years ago. Truly disconcerting! And this is not fiction. Such experiences are commonplace with experts in possession of these leaves spreading out all over the country and abroad.
In Tamil, nadi means "in search of". Says Durai Subburathnam of Sri Kousiha Agasthya Mahasiva Vakkiya Nadi Jothida Nilayam, Chennai: "The person whose palm leaf record exists with us will definitely approach us at a predestined time specified on the leaves."
The process is simple. To locate a manuscript, the thumb impression of the person is taken on paper, left for women and right for men. But opinions differ. While Subburathnam claims that these are classified into 1,008 types, Delhi based nadi reader B Raju says that there are only 108 types. The palm leaves are also arranged accordingly. Finding your leaf is not as easy as giving your thumb impression. It is a painstaking job to match the two, sometimes it takes several hours. Says Raju: "If we are unable to locate the leaf, we ask the client to come again after a few days as we have to get it from our native place. Or we refer to Sukshma nadi, which gives brief predictions." These leaves also give you the planetary positions in the personâs horoscope. "This is the confirmation stamp," says Raju.
