SINGAPORE:Except for the strikingly clean state of the pavement that he is seated on, everything about veteran Kili Josiyar (parrot tarot teller) Sengottaiyan’s set-up could be straight out of your average Indian town. The cage housing the parrot looks battered, the cards look age-worn around the edges, there are strips of Tamil newspapers strewn around and his clothes are anything but fancy. And yet, he is seated outside one of the swankiest buildings in Downtown Singapore — the India Heritage Centre, which was on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s must-visit list, before his two day visit was cut short to 24 hours.
“It’s nice here,” he says, cracking a wiry smile. “Lots of Tamil people around, especially from close to my place,” he adds. His ‘place’ is a small village, a bus ride away from Erode town. Though Sengottaiyan left India and went to Malaysia for the first time in 1989 — parrot and tarot in hand — he is new to Singapore. “Most of my travelling work (telling fortunes, mostly outside temples) is usually done in the Indian-heavy areas of Malaysia such as Kuala Lumpur and Penang. But this time, they called us here to set up an Indian bazaar outside this centre ahead of Diwali and the PM’s visit,” he tells.
The prospect of making extra money and of catching the PM live were quite enough to make him defer his trip home.
The carefully curated India Heritage Centre -- which has artefacts and rare recordings of Indians who left an imprint on Singapore -- was opened less than six months ago.
Letting his parrot pick out the fortunes of people visiting the centre, is just half the fun for him. Sussing out what peoples’ worries are and talking them through are the things that engages his mental faculties.
“People who come here (locals) are just like Indians,” Sengottaiyan declares. “Even they want to know when they are going to get married, whether to change jobs, move abroad or the eternal favourite -- is it a girl or a boy,” he laughs.
Looking around at the busy streets of Little India, the grey-haired man explains that this ‘gig’ had upset his yearly vacation schedule. “Every year, I used to go home to Erode for Diwali. That is the only time I would get to see my wife and children,” he says, adding that they had never wanted to migrate to Malaysia because he was living frugally.
“My children are all grown up now, so they are used to not seeing me too often. One of them works in a saloon and the other is studying,” he adds proudly.
Now that the India Heritage Centre is off the PM’s radar, most of the ‘tellers’ are gearing up to fly back to their native countries. “There was a time when I would go home to get specially-bred parrots. But nowadays I have found a good supplier in Malaysia,” he says, patting the cage happily. “Anyway, Indian or Malaysian, the birds always pick good fortunes!” he says.