My friend and I were chatting while walking on a road in Vizianagaram in the then undivided Andhra Pradesh, when a tribal fortune teller came over to us and offered to predict our future. My friend offered his palm nonchalantly. On reading his palm, the fortune teller moved his lips gravely and said my friend was to meet a watery grave when he reached 27. He was 19 then.This prediction naturally upset my friend that he stopped visiting water sources like rivers, ponds and wells.
I asked him not to take the fortune teller’s words at face value since many of them are charlatans, but it did not cut much ice with him and he continued to fear water. When he turned 27, I was told that he committed suicide by jumping into the well right in front of his house.After this, I developed an interest in palmistry. I acquired rudimentary knowledge of it and tested my prowess with my friends and relatives. One day I casually saw the palm of my childhood friend. His head line cut into two and the lines were protruding towards the heart line, while the line in the left hand was intact.
According to what I had read in the books, he would either suffer a chronic headache or meet with an accident that is non-fatal. Since my friend was a truck driver and had no history of suffering from headaches, I advised him not to drive the vehicle rashly. However, after a month, his lorry was hit by a heavy truck damaging it severely, but he survived with minor injuries. Upon discharge, he was grateful to me for my advice.
In another case, an aunt suffering from cancer was told that her chances of survival beyond six months were remote. But I told her she would live at least for five more years. She did not believe my words thinking I was saying it only to console her. But she did live three years after my prediction.
Predictions may often go wrong. My predictions too were not accurate. In the first case, the tribal soothsayer’s prediction was perhaps a result of his fertile imagination, though the result was accurate. However, his prediction might have psychologically changed my friend and even driven him to the extreme step. In the second case, my friend’s careful driving might have saved the day for him. In the last instance I deliberately predicted an enhanced lifespan to boost my aunt’s spirits. Since there is no empirical evidence to suggest that palmistry is a reliable science, believe it at your peril.