Connaught Circle, New Delhi, India: A fortune teller told me...
In the closing years of WWII, my dad was a young man impatient to get home to Johannesburg after spending the war aboard submarines and destroyers in the Indian Ocean.
On shore leave at Mt Lavinia beach in Sri Lanka, he crossed paths with a fortune teller of the numerology kind who, as always, had some important knowledge to impart for a few rupees.
The fortune teller, who I'm going to refer to as FT from now on, having pocketed Tom's offered coins, asked him to draw three digits in the sand. Dad wrote three digits and FT looked at them and said "These numbers represent you having two brothers and one sister"
"I do!" said Tom "But what I really want to know is when I'll be going home?"
"I'm coming to that." says FT "More rupees!"
A few more rupees magically flash in and out of existence and FT erases Tom's first three numbers and gestures to write three more. The next three numbers indicate that "You work with fine instruments. I can't tell names. I don't know what they are, but fine instruments."
"Right again!" thinks Tom. His vocation was as a draughtsman, working with variable protractor, bezier curve, compass and slide rule.
By this time Tom was getting a bit edgy, not least because FT had apparently nailed these facts from nothing more than what Tom was sure were meaningless digits. Additionally however, Tom was thinking of the military command's injunction barring servicefolk from talking to fortune tellers and soothsayers. The risk of spies gathering information about ship and troop movements and so on...
But Dad was hooked - he thought the guy might know...
"Look - can you tell me when I'm going home, or not?"
"More rupees!" FT sweeps the last digits from the sand and gestures extravagantly... Tom writes three more digits. FT studies them for somewhat longer than the previous times. "I cannot tell when you will go home. Because you will not be going home" he pronounced, then hastened to add "Your service in the navy will end in a country you have never been to before."
"What country? Where?"
"I cannot tell you. It is far away. Further than here at Mt Lavinia beach."
In 1946 Dad was demobilised at Fremantle in Western Australia, where he met my mum. It was a lot further from South Africa than Mt Lavinia beach...
Half a century later, I was standing at the edge of Connaught Circle, the enormous ring road at the heart of the Raj's New Delhi. The incessant roar of smoky vehicles saturated the space inside the circular wall of collonaded buildings. I was just pinging on the activity, colour and utter delicious strangeness of it.
I'd developed the habit of always walking purposefully as if on some important mission, as I'd found it the least offensive and quickest way of deflecting the thousands of hawkers just waiting to catch your eye. On this occasion though, I just wanted to sit and soak it all up. Being a smoker at the time, I sat and made myself a cigarette and watched that amazing carousel strobe by in front of me.
Next minute, there's the cry of "You a very lucky man!". This is the standard opening line of all the hawkers of the fortune teller kind that I encountered in Delhi. The follow up is "Would you like to know why you're lucky?" Up to this moment I'd been pretty adept at a polite "No thanks" (I'm on an important mission!) and moving right along. But this guy had me.
I looked up from my seated position to see well over two meters of turbaned Sikh, clutching some kinda filofax thingy, earnestly searching for my eyes with his. As soon as our eyes met he's out with "I have something you must know!" OK. So there's two interesting things in the first few seconds, plus I don't want to move away. I'm enjoying merging with the traffic noise and air pollution of this frenetic place!
It was interesting that he was Sikh, because of all the filofax fortune tellers I'd seen that far, none of the others were. It also interested me that he deviated from the script I'd come to know so well.
"Oh, I don't know my friend." I begin...
"Wait. Wait." he says "Where are you from?" I tell him Australia - he opens the filofax and flips through the pages. By this time I'm standing next to him and spot the third unusual thing. There's a photo of the particular mystic I'd come to India to check out pasted in his book.
I like a paradox and this qualified, because I knew that that particular mystic's teachings advocate avoiding occult practices such as divining, mediumship and spiritual healing. So what's up with that? FT, whose name was Arunjit, says that the mystic is his guru!
"And you're a fortune teller?" I ask, sort of raising an eyebrow or something.
He laughs...
"Oh yes! Is OK! Look! Look! I am good! This girl from Melborn - she tell you!"
Arunjit's waving a letter at me. A letter written in a naive script, purporting to be a testimonial from a fellow Australian. It promoted Arunjit well, but damn, the girl from Melbourne must have spent some time in India, as her grammar was very Indiglish!
So I'm "Nah, I don't think so Arunjit."
"Please. Please! I must tell you. I must tell you something only you can know. No money! No money! You must know!" OK - now it's getting freaky. No money! WTF? I cave...
"OK OK - please tell me"
"It is very important that I tell you this. If you see I'm good, then maybe you come back and pay me some money?"
"No promises, Arunjit. If I see you're good..."
"No problem. No problem. I must tell you that there are two women that love you very much."
I'm thinking... Brilliant! My mum and my lover. How hard was that!
"Ummm..." I say.
"One of them you know. One of them you don't know."
I'm thinking... Even better! Surefire hit on everybody with that one! Genius!
"Ummmm - so...?" I say.
"I'm going to tell you the name of the one you don't know."
I'm thinking.... Fark off! What's that ever going to prove? I don't bloody KNOW her! This is NOT a good act, Arunjit!
"Ummmm - but how will I know you're good? I don't know her, Arunjit."
"No matter. You must know. You will see. Then you come back!"
"Alright then - what's her name?"
"Linda."
"Well you got that right mate! I don't know any Linda that might love me."
"No. No. Not Linda. Sounds like Linda. I can't say - my pronunciation not right. Sounds like Linda."
I thanked him at that point and shed him a few rupees anyway. We shook hands and parted, me still puzzling about that mystic's picture in his filofax and how Arunjit seemed so BAD at that fortune telling act. Especially in the light of my dad's story! Oh well...
24 hours later I landed at Perth airport to be greeted by my mum and dad. I'm adopted and my mum and dad are the folks who raised me. Just prior to leaving for India, I'd decided I'd like to make contact with my birth parents if possible and had listed my name on our state's contact register.
My mum comes bolting up to me at the airport, gives me a tremendous hug and exclaims "Great news! Your mother has made contact with the agency. She's living in Melbourne and was over here visiting family and thought she'd update her contact details. Her name is Lynley!"
Oh yeah: I have to go back for another smoke at Connaught Circle. I have to find Arunjit and give him some serious cash. I just know he'll be waiting...
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