Warning.

The following episode includes discussion of magical leaves, prophecies, miracles, big temples, bigger disappointments, black magic, fresh lime, soda, and snake astronauts.

Sensitive listeners, you've been warned.

It's the middle of August.

I've been in India for two minutes and everything is falling apart.

I want the complaint number for the universe.

I want a manager on the line because this is not what my astrologer, Dr Kumar told me WOULD happened.

So you're in the right track.

Something very profound is going to happen to you know.

I mean Dr Kumar did predict I'd be going to India for this show.

There are lots of things for you to accomplish, including foreign travels, So go to India because that is all the gyaan wisdom is.

And he also said this

You cannot fail, let's put it as that.

Back in April, I experienced a miracle of astrology.

I had walked into a random astrologer's office and queens and during my session, the astrologer Dr Kumar had told me something horrible would happen, and he was right.

Exactly one month later, my father passed away and it changed the trajectory of both this show and my life.

And for many people that would be enough to make them believe in astrology, but it wasn't for me.

Astrology had told me what would happen, but I still had no idea what to do about it.

But there was one place that I really thought could have and there's these little shops hidden across India that practice nadi astrology.

The idea is, your fortune was written on scrolls centuries ago, and if you can find your scroll, it'll reveal everything, your past, your future, who's the person you're supposed to be?

Anyway, the moment I decided to book the trip to see one of these shops, I called my aunt Suman and asked her to be my fixer.

When I was in high school, Suman or Suman-akka and my uncle Jayant let me live and intern with them in Bombay for a summer.

They were running this hot advertising company called Heartbeat, which had just made huge waves with this racy condom campaign.

Of course, I sat in on the decidedly less racy creative meetings, which I loved, pitching ideas and jingles for things like washing machines and ceiling fans that summer gave high school me a huge boost of confidence.

It had this direct impact on my co founding a magazine a few years later.

But also hanging with Suman-akka was just fun.

She inspired silliness, like sometimes she'll just decide it's more enjoyable to have a conversation like you're singing opera to one another.

Today's shopping list from me coffee jam, a bag of tea, something sweet, and spaghetti.

This will be hot, boring, spree.

So I'm eager to hang out with her again.

Except somewhere between Bombay's baggage claim and customs, I get this call Right now.

I'm shivering away, so I'm so,

I'm really so sorry that you're you're ill.

It's really frustrating because I've arranged everything else.

Suman-akka is waiting for the doctor to call back, and it's very likely she has dengue fever.

Well, I've been using my mosquito repellent like it's cologne, and so it's I'm playing it cool on the phone, but this is me secretly terrified.

Not so much about the diseases though dengue and COVID are definitely not great, but more how I'm going to manage these interviews.

If they speak English, I'm fine going alone.

He speaks Hindi.

Huh, he only speaks Hindi.

This is a problem because meri hindi bahut karab AKA, my Hindi as shit.

So I panic and then I have an idea.

What if her son plays translator for me?

And I realized this is a ridiculous question.

But for the Nadi guy, is there any way I could take Arjun with me.

Arjun, who's a few years younger than me, was always a golden child.

He was handsome, sensitive, artistic, and musical.

But I lost track of him in our twenties when he moved to Dubai and started a career there.

And then there was this period where he fully disappeared, this dark spot which our family doesn't really talk about.

We'll have to ask him.

Yeah, you just call him, Yeah, that could be nice.

The rain pommels the city as I take a cabin, but I'm happy to see the monsoon.

It's both wet and sunny outside, and everything smells green and earthy as the rain continues to fall.

In the lobby, the hotel doors are open, and if you look just right between the swaying ponds and the mist, you can spot the Arabian Sea.

I'm fiddling with my recording equipment when I spot Arjun walking in.

Doing good?

I'm brilliant.

How are you?

Good!

Shall we sit for a minute?

Yeah, yeah, totally.

I can't tell you how happy I am to see him.

We're both grayer, both dads.

Now, after a quick embrace, I tell him about the chaos that's welcomed me, how he saved me, because I feel like that's my entire trip, is like everything's falling apart slowly.

Do You know, the charm of India is that even if everything's breaking, now everything's fine.

You know, everyone has a very nice, relaxed kind of attitude like this happens.

Yeah, Well,

you can't take life so seriously.

There's a phrase in India, chalta hai, which loosely translates to don't worry things happen.

You hear it a lot because India is unbridled.

No matter how much you try to will it, it runs on its own schedule.

And that's wonderfully easy to embrace when you're on vacation or not responsible for what happens.

But it's a little more difficult when you're on an impossible quest to determine what you should and shouldn't believe for the rest of your life, and you've given yourself two weeks to do that.

But that's why people come to India right, to go on some sort of spiritual retreat and find themselves.

God, I'm such a cliche.

The only thing I can hope for now is that Dr Kumar is going to be right twice.

You cannot fail.

Let's put it as that.

From Kaleidoscope and I Heart Podcasts.

I’m Mangesh Hattikudur.

Welcome to Skyline Drive.

Chapter one.

Straight from Shiva’s mouth.

This is Bombay.

As a kid, Bombay is where I used to start and end every trip to India… midnight arrivals and 2am feasts with relatives who’ve been waiting years to see us.

The world was bigger then, harder to wrap your arms around.

Flights to India took 22 hours with multiple layovers and refueling stops in New York, then Paris, then Cairo, then Delhi… and only then, Bombay.

And it was expensive.

We’d save up until we could go back, and every trip was an event.

This is the library.

It’s under my aunt’s apartment in Chembur, and it’s where I used to borrow old comics and Mad Magazines.

And the gymkhana where I learned to play snooker.

This is Xaviers, where my dad studied, and then didn’t, in his more delinquent years.

This is the disco where I learned to dance, and Khyber, where my parents went on their first date.

Bombay has always felt like my city.

In New York, people correct me when I say Bombay, but Indians never do.

Still, I toggle between the names, depending on my mood.

Driving through the city, it feels like an old friend whose path has veered from your own.

Like you don’t quite see eye to eye anymore, but you’re also not around each other for long enough to make a thing of it.

The thing is, I still feel my dad here, like a fog that descended on this city ages ago and refused to burn off.

[Sound: busy Bombay street with traffic] Arjun and I are standing on a street corner in the Santa Cruz neighborhood of Bombay, waiting to step into the nadi shop that my aunt Suman somehow located for us.

From the outside, the place looks tiny and nondescript.

Something you’d overlook if you weren’t hunting for it.

How would you describe it, since you're not from here?

There's a fleet of rickshaws going by us, right.

And uh, and the rain has stopped now, but there are tons of puddles.

And lots of cow shit.

And the cows seem to have moved on.

Even in central Bombay, cows own the road.

And, uh, and we're gonna walk into this place to see the nadi.

Do you know anything about nadi?

This will be my first experience too.

But there's a lot of fortune telling that happens in India, and some of it can be pretty authentic, though the charlatans are much more in number.

The funny thing about these nadi shops is that as soon as people tell you to go to one, they’ll also tell you how many fake ones there are.

But this place is well-regarded, so I’m hopeful.

We walk through the doorway, leave our shoes in a dusty two-foot by two-foot vestibule, and then enter reception barefoot.

I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe a wall full of scrolls?

Maybe big brass sculptures of little known deities and saints?

Or maybe just some wall art?

Instead we’re standing in a tiny, poorly lit box; a couple of benches pressed up against the walls and a desk facing the door.

We give our name to the man pottering at the desk, and then… we just wait.

Ah, five, ten minutes.

The nadi reader, Mukesh-ji, peeks out from behind a wall to tell us he’s doing his morning prayers.

He asks us if we’d like water or tea while we wait.How incredible would it be if the first astrologer I met in India located an instruction manual for the rest of my life?

What if the leaves hiding in his archive actually contain my life’s purpose?

I’m genuinely giddy.

Of course, of course.

So these are a whole bunch of scrolls.

Actually, [speaks in Hindi]...

Mukesh places the scrolls on his desk, and lets us inspect them.

Oh, wow.

It's engraved.

It’s beautiful.

I’ve been calling them scrolls, but that feels like the wrong word.

Have you ever seen those Pantone booklets with pages that fan out?

These are almost like an ancient version of that, but longer, made of very thin sheets.

Each scroll is maybe three to four inches wide, and about a foot and a half long, and they’re stacked and bound, with maybe thirty or forty per booklet.

As we marvel at the tiny lines of text etched across them, Mukesh explains the origins.

And what, uh, these are, these are palm leaves.

Palm leaves.

Just- wow.

The leaves, he tells us, were etched in the 18th century, when a family made copies of the original millenia-old predictions.

The engravings were laborious, and the script is tiny, but these scrolls have lasted because the caretakers meticulously rub them with oil once a year to preserve them.

Here’s Arjun translating.

Basically, Sir said that this is coming from Tamil Nadu, where Tamil is the oldest language in the world.

And it's coming from the Siddha tradition.

The siddhas are some of the oldest keepers of knowledge, according to India.

Mukesh also tells us that these nadi shastras, or these sacred prophecies, have a mythological provenance.

Lord Shiva in all his wisdom shared the knowledge with the goddess Parvati, his wife, who then passed it on to Lord Brahma, who passed the knowledge from the gods to the sages and then finally, to the priests.

To me it sounds like a game of celestial telephone, but Mukesh-ji tells us these scrolls are less prone to human error than traditional astrology.

Because the words inscribed here come straight from God…

So he is only the reader, but the information is directly available and cannot be soiled by human touch as such.

Mukesh tells us he’s been doing this for twenty-nine years.

He shows us photos on his phone of him with clients—people he asks us not to share, but they include some of India’s biggest politicians and most famous scientists.

He stresses that he’s a humble man.

He’s just a reader providing answers for people in need.

And I believe him.

Then he gently reaches for my thumb, rolls it across a pad of ink, and he presses it onto a sheet of paper.

He said the Rishis, they gave us a methodology directly relating to the thumbprint for which there are one hundred and eight divisions.

Basically, the whorls on my finger will give the librarians a clue as to where my leaf might be.

There are thousands and thousands of these bundles of scrolls in the back, and they’re all carefully organized.

Sometimes, he says, the process can take fifteen minutes.

Sometimes it takes months.

He also comments on my aunt’s absence.

He says part of the reason she fell ill was that she wasn’t meant to be here today.

Sometimes people have car accidents trying to get here.

Others apparently get Dengue.

But since I’ve made it into this room, he tells me this is fate.

Life is such that at the end of the day, this is earth.

There will be problems.

He said that you must remain in your mind and your heart quiet.

Problems will come, problems will go.

So try and stay calm.

But it is destiny sometimes.

I stare at the ink on my thumb, remembering this weird fact from my days at Mental Floss: that koalas have fingerprints that can be mistaken for humans.

I laugh to myself, wondering if my scroll could be mistaken for a koala’s.

If Mukesh-ji comes back and tells me that I’ll enjoy napping in trees for eighteen hours a day, or feasting on eucalyptus in my older age, I’ll know exactly what went wrong.

It’s the type of dumb joke I’d share with Suman-akka, but it’s too dumb to make in this room.

So I'm also gonna try and catch you up in a nutshell.

It involves him building townships in the Ivory Coast.

If you’re ever in Ivory Coast, never SAY Ivory Coast.

Côte de-

Yeah.

And then coming back to Dubai to help sort a multi-million dollar deal.

Yeah.

I actually shifted to the Middle East.

Everyone was like, what's wrong with you?

It involves a reneged transaction.

And him taking the fall for someone else’s carelessness.

I called up and I said, can I come back now that I've sent you all money to clear everything?

And they said, Ah, come on back, there's no problem, you sent the money, you've cleared everything.

I came back and I got arrested.

It’s him being thrown in some of the region’s worst and most violent prisons.

And I've been through multiple jails.

Yeah.

Tossed around.

And pretending to be a Buddhist, so he wouldn’t be killed for being a Hindu.

Many of them were petty criminals, but a lot of them were knife murderers.

It is a story of trauma.

I kind of collapsed, mentally, spiritually, psychologically, everything.

And finding a guru who nurtured his resiliency.

So the guru actually can identify within you whether you are ready or you're still holding back.

And it’s the story of a miracle.

When I came out, I had had malaria for fifty days.

Wow.

Without medication.

There was no practical reason in the world I should have in my life.

And another.

My sentence disappeared.

They had to let me go because they didn't know whatever they were doing with the person that didn't have any record of any jail sentence.

Some of our chats I taped, some of them I didn’t, but I know he could have died in prison, from beatings or malaria or anything.

He would have been there forever, except somehow his guru told him his court records would disappear, and they did.

The guru assured him the jails would release him, which they did.

He found himself under house arrest as the courts tried to find his records, and then the guru told him if he wanted a new life, he needed to make his way home.

That he would be protected, but he needed to flee, and take any help he could to get back to India.

So, he ran, hid, and waited until the same person he’d taken the fall for arranged for his escape from the Middle East.

And one night, in darkness, he was stuffed into the bed of a truck, crammed in with other terrified bodies—people he didn’t know and would never meet again—and trafficked across borders until he found his way home.

And now it’s him, being here in India, with me.

And still I had come out alive once again, you know, cheating death too many times.

It is a way to tell a story without telling a story.

It is vague, and capacious, and insufficient.

But he is back now.

(laughing) How are you?

I’m brilliant.

And it’s the thing that matters.

[Music: Ahmer, “Rov”] Should I, uh, should I get you a ticket to come meet us there?

I would love that, yeah.

Perfect.

And so is Mark coming now?

For a minute, we thought Mark wasn’t going to make it to India.

His visa got backlogged.

There was a moment when I wanted to tell him not to worry, chalta hai.

But even I’d lost faith by this point.

Then thanks to God, or the Indian Embassy, or possibly Dr.

Kumar, it was approved right before he was set to leave.

It'll be fun, I think.

I think the three of us hanging out will be fun.

That'll be so cool.

Okay, great.

Tamil.

They, their language is Tamil, you know?

We will come late, long time to take to find out.

Pucka, a hundred percent.

But- all speak Tamil?

When I look at him quizzically, trying to understand how exactly we’ve moved from astrology to aliens, he just assures me he’s right.

Then he smiles at me like I’m an idiot.

Because obviously, aliens speak Tamil.

This place name is Kanjipuram.

Satish.

Yes sir.

It has 2000 temples.

City of Temples.

But yeah, that's where we're off to.

Are you gonna record your six o'clock voice?

Yes sir.

Good mooorrrrning.

Sorry.

I think I had two of those, uh, coffees this morning.

Yeah.

[Sound: Street traffic from inside the taxi, traditional Indian music playing from the car radio]

If you study Hindi, Hindu Vedic texts, you'll understand that there's a lot of interaction between snake culture and human culture.

And, um, there's a lot of snake worship that happens in India.

Okay.

So.

I’m going to pause right here to say, I don’t know what’s going on with all this snake talk.

But they keep coming up, again and again, and it feels like it should mean something.

The way George, in our last episode, saw a snake as a sign that he could be good to himself.

That he could shed his trauma and transform.

The way my mom experienced snakes as a curse, something she had to transcend with mysterious prayers.

And now Arjun is talking about how he’s read early Hindu texts about snakes as superior beings, carriers of a greater wisdom.

And he starts talking about one account he read, from a mystic who claims to have seen these astral snakes.

(laughing) Uh-huh.

He said that his guru got him to meet one of the incoming astronauts.

Space snake astronauts.

But just the idea of a snake astronaut is, ahh.

Yeah, as I said, it’s-

Yeah.

It feels unbelievable.

It is unbelievable.

It’s- A traveler.

He doesn't have to wear a space suit.

And when you read the book, he says it’s not possible for me to explain what exactly I saw, but the snakes are very different than what you all imagine in your head, and all I can describe to you is it was blue and glowing.

Snake astronaut?

Yeah.

Well, I mean-

Like a traveler, essentially.

In my cursory understanding of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, these serpent-like beings rule over three planes filled with multiple planets, and they are worshiped as the keepers of both incredible treasure and concealed wisdom.

“Treasure texts,” as one book puts it.

As we drive further away from Chennai, they’re a harbinger of what we’re about to learn.

The snakes don't rule over hell.

They rule over a different set of planets, and they're supposed to be very opulent creatures.

Who-

Is this in this book, or is this a different book?

Mark, who’s been quiet this whole time, perks up at this talk of snake astronauts.

He has so many questions, about the origins, about how much Arjun could possibly believe in this… but he mostly just saves his commentary for later.

That's the issue that I have.

Whether or not they wear spacesuits.

First of all, let me imagine that snake astronauts wear spacesuits.

And it's like, yeah, that's the problem that I have with this.

The hangup.

Before long we realize we’re in Kanjipuram.

The temple town is famous for its beautiful shrines and architecture, along with its saris—gorgeous bolts of rich silk, embroidered with thread dipped in gold.

That’s an Indian name.

Your name, sir?

Mangesh.

Mangesh?

Mangesh.

Umesh.

All Indian names, sir.

You are not a foreigner, sir, you are Indian.

Yeah, I’m Indian.

I mean, born in America.

And your father’s name?

My father's name is Umesh.

They put us in the queue, and then we wait some more.

Every ten or fifteen minutes someone’s name is called, and one of the men—because it’s weirdly almost all men here—a mix of middle-aged business owners, and people who look anxious to get married, will disappear inside.

I am reading one, one, okay.

I am reading father name, mother named.

First your palm leaf we confirm.

Our reader starts reading the Tamil off the scroll.

He asks: Your father’s dead and mother living?

I respond yes.

They’re looking for an exact match… the perfect card in the card catalog… and each time the details of the scroll don’t line up with my life, he slaps it to the back of the bundle, and moves on to the next.

I mean, I have a son and one kid who’s non-binary.

He slaps it to the back of the pile.

But I’m a little dizzy trying to stay on top of his accent and trying to make sure I’m answering the questions correctly, until, he says this.

Two children, you have?

I have two children.

Two male children.

No.

You have only one sister?

No brother?

You’re married.

Living with your wife?

I have one sister, no brother.

Sister unmarried?

Yeah.

Yes.

Married by engagement?

Yes.

Sister married- unmarried.

Yes.

No brother.

Only one sister?

Yes.

You are in private job, working?

Mm-hmm.

You are married and living with your wife?

Mm-hmm.

Father dead, the mother living?

Mm-hmm.

And bingo, that is it!

He’s found it!

After fifteen hours of being on planes, two weeks of hunting through stacks in Mumbai, another hourlong flight, a two-hour drive, and three hours of waiting on a humid patio that would give most steam rooms an inferiority complex, we see this man for twenty minutes, and… he just finds it.

Arjun thinks I’m blessed.

Mark looks more skeptical.

And the three of us, we file downstairs.

So the tough part is done, which is he had to be matched.

We weren't able to get him matched in Bombay.

They didn't, they couldn't find him.

So what happens now?

Do we know?

And now you've got the real deal.

So now the fun will be, that'll be broadcasting to America your future.

Yeah.

[Music: Heems, “Al Q8a”]

You were born in good family.

You were born in a good family…

I’m listening keenly, but nothing here is interesting.

He says my mother may get ill, but medicines will help.

He says my sister’s engagement has already taken place, and in the near future she will get married.

Your sister's marriage will take this- your sister will be enjoying her life with her husband.

But here’s the thing.

While we’re sitting in this room, I have one of those Kaiser Soze moments from The Usual Suspects.

In the whole scroll section, I’d given away all my details.

Is your mom’s name Chitra?

No, it’s Lalita.

Is your father living?

No, he’s passed.

Is your sister married?

Well, she’s engaged.

I laugh because in some ways this is both the most ridiculous thing and the most specific thing about me.

To date, I have never had a new car or a luxurious one.

Since high school, I’ve just driven a series of beaters.

And man, I’d love a car that starts when you want it to!

Anyway, the rest of the reading is more of the same.

You will buy a luxurious car.

(laughing)

A new car.

Basically, he’s upselling us.

What I got was the starter pack.

We’ve already paid for this part.

And we put down a healthy tip on top, on his insistence.

If you want to know anything else…

You don’t take cards, right?

Or you don’t take, like, Google Pay or anything like that?

Okay, I’ll figure that out, then.

And now, if we want to know more about any specific part of my life—the section of the leaf that deals with my career, or my health, or my kids, or one of like nine more things, we will need to pay more.

Google Pay, yeah, Google Pay okay.

-in the other building, the building there.

I step outside to chat with Mark.

There’s an ATM there?

Okay.

The truth is, I was more than confused.

I was feeling deflated.

After that experience in Mumbai, we had spent so much time trying to figure out the perfect nadi place to visit.

I’d come all this way and dragged Mark and Arjun here because this is where I thought I had the best chance of finding my fortune.

And then, nothing.

How are you feeling?

Confused.

It's like, I don't expect grand revelations every time- Feels like kind of a bust.

Yeah.

There’s a line I didn’t catch on tape, but it’s stuck with me.

Mark says: You already got your miracle of astrology.

You can’t expect a second one.

You can’t expect it every time.

When I go back in, the reader opens the chapter about my last life.

He says I had been born the son of a milk man.

In the milk business.

You know—in a typical milk vendor family.

He was born in, it is called, Uttar Pradesh, state of India.

He was born in a milk vendor family.

He tells me that I slept around, and I think he’s saying I gave my wife STDs?

I also treated my parents horribly and didn’t support them, I cheated my business partners.

And I’m nodding vigorously, and enjoying this… and weirdly, this part is kind of the realest to me!

Like, every time someone tells me they’ve seen a psychic or a reader, or had some revelation in a dream, they were a king or queen in their past life.

And to me it’s like, there aren’t that many kings in history.

How can all of us have been kings?!

So, weirdly, this is finally a storyline I can buy into.

You gave problem to your wife.

You did minimum karma in your last life.

She will be a girl of a restless nature.

She will be a girl of a self-destructive timidity.

But as she puts it, “During times of upheaval, it reassures me to read these typewritten pages; to be reminded that one long-dead man took the measure of my life, and said it was not all bad.”

She will brood over the memories of the past, she will brood on fancied slight.

Very unflattering, but also like, really specific, and I’m afraid to say super accurate.

I do love this milkman stuff, not because I believe it, but because I love that someone has created a new mythology for me; a new origin story for the problems I’m facing.

And now, they’ve given me a new way to remedy those problems, too– albeit through a few too many visits to temples for my liking!

So it’s pure fun, but when I think about it later, it won’t scratch the itch I actually have: because, like Shruti, I wanted to walk into this shop and let someone take the measure of my life.

I was looking very disinterested.

So the man asked me, ma'am, can you read Tamil?

I said, yes, very well, I can read Tamil.

Then he started showing the palm leaf to me after a point.

Then he said, does your father's name start with A?

He said yes.

And then I could see the name written there of my father-in-law, in Tamil.

That was when it hit me.

And I thought, okay, there is something here.

They're not bluffing.

I feel like an idiot.

I hadn’t thought to photograph my leaf.

I don’t know if they would have let me, but maybe there was a miracle lurking in there.

Not in the prophecy, but in the sorting system.

Was there something beautiful I missed?

When Mark and I talk about it later at our hotel bar, Mark has a different perspective on the place.

It's basically like a magic trick that we couldn't see the reveal.

It was like hearing a magic trick.

Four to five years, you're gonna get a luxury automobile.

Right.

That would be such a big deal to a certain kind of person.

Yeah, I mean, that probably sustains a lot of people.

Chapter eight.

Double dose.

Wait, I'll put you on speaker.

Hi, Lizzie.

Well, he is my brother at the end of the day and I wasn't gonna abandon him.

Thank you for taking Mangesh around.

There’s a phrase I grew up using in India: cousin-brother and cousin-sister.

In joint families, you grow up thinking of cousins as closer than just a cousin.

You tie rakhi to them, or these promise threads that promise love and protection, and you treat your cousins as if they’re siblings—because they are in a way.

And the fact that Arjun is here with me now, despite the oceans between us, despite the time that’s passed…

That’s right.

What are you gonna do.

But having said that, this is my first experience with astrology as well.

I was actually warned not to dabble in these kind of, um, subjects.

(laughs)

So Mangesh is subjecting you to things you've been avoiding.

You know, tempting you with danger?

Yeah.

Tempting me with taboo subjects.

Shame, shame.

Arjun has told me what he’s been through, but I can’t imagine it.

It’s too horrifying.

And I admire him so much.

How he’s somehow pulled together his family, and picked up the shards of his life, and how he keeps moving forward with such grace and humility.

If my days in Chennai were a blur of endless car rides, the final pitstop was always a seat at the empty hotel bar.

Sometimes it was me and Mark, sometimes it was Arjun and me, and occasionally it was the three of us, sitting in a dimly lit patio, shooing away mosquitos as we sipped fresh lime sodas.

On the tougher days, I’d cut the soda with gin, and bum a cigarette off of Arjun.

And on one of these nights, Arjun told us about his sade sati—the seven and a half years of bad luck, brought on by Saturn, that everyone experiences at some point, according to Vedic astrology.

His seven and a half years, he tells us, were considered particularly bad:

That's right.

He's the bad influence in my life.

Ah, well, I experienced a double sade sati, almost.

Mine pretty much came true.

So I've had really shit luck, like, really shit luck.

Does everyone experience it?

Until this moment Arjun has never once talked about how difficult this period has been.

He’s talked about it matter of factly; he’s talked about embracing the future, but this is the first time he says just how hard his life was.

The difference?

But mine ended last year and, uh, I'm still trying to understand- The difference, yeah.

I'm trying to figure out what went right, and I know there are certain things that have changed.

But I can't, I can't feel it in a physical form.

That’s crazy.

I didn’t realize that-

Yeah.

I mean, Arjun doesn’t believe in astrology.

I never asked him to get a reading.

But astrology has happened to him—the shadow of that seven and a half years of bad luck has been lurking in the back of his mind.

There’s another moment that I can’t stop thinking about from the bar, after I’d turned off my recorder.

Mark says, too often, when a story isn’t going right, the impulse is to speed up—to book as many interviews as you can.

It’s that old sailor’s adage: If you can’t tie a good knot, tie a lot of them.

But Mark encourages the opposite.

He says I need to slow down.

He says if I’m going to resolve anything about my life, about my dad, it is not going to be with him.

Or Arjun.

And it’s not going to be through astrology.

Astrology was never the point.

He tells me to make a pilgrimage to where I feel most connected—to my family, and to my past.

To just sit with that experience.

And I think about that.

I really do.

I obviously did much more than pass on STDs to one person.