Sunday, January 9, 2011

ON CRYSTAL BALLS AND PSYCHICS

If someone asked me the best part about the ‘future’, with my usual indecision I would be able to come up with a list of pros and cons and be stumped when it comes to picking one of them. That is until yesterday. Today, I know my answer. The best part is that it is the future, you don’t know anything about it and neither have to deal with it until it comes.

The scamming industry (or the mystic art if you prefer) of gypsies and psychics thrives on the hordes of people swamped in apprehension. The poor shmucks who are and have been sad are scared that the future will disappoint them similarly and the lucky and content are scared of their luck running out in the future. Desperate, desolate, nervous they all turn to tea-leaves, talons and crystal balls to relieve that squirmy feeling in the pit of their stomachs which seems to incite every other muscle in their bodies into erratic inexplicable movement.

I am not blessed with some Abhimanyu like pre natal experience which would make me the master of such pearls of wisdom. It is the crazy process of taking life-changing entrance examinations that has lead me to wrestle this information out of one-on-one combat with mind numbing uncertainty of results.

If I had not been at the end of my wits waiting for the 12th of January to just magically arrive and my results, I probably would not have fallen for getting my ‘aura’ read by my psychic friend (we will just call her Mystique. I am an X-men fan obviously). One more month and I would have escaped college a Mystique virgin, but it was not to be. I had resisted the temptation for the better part of my three years of college despite testimonials of her talent from all my other friends, but sitting only a table apart from her I broke down.

I think now I know how a pendulum feels. I too have been swinging between utter dejection at gloomy visions of my cheerless future and carefully faked nonchalance at the idea. In one such attempt at bravado I said it. “Tell me”.

The butterflies then had a field day in my stomach when Mystique told me to take off my glasses. She asked me the maximum marks and then with a smile as indecipherable as the ever-present twinkle in her eyes she said, “maybe 55 to 60 percentile”. I am sure some of those butterflies died when my heart plummeted into my stomach. Though every fiber of my very tiny rational self screamed that this couldn’t be true, my flustered deprecatory laugh was not effortless.

In all fairness, maybe this proclamation was nothing more than her failure to translate the colour codes of my aura into the ineffable percentile system (she never claimed to be good at math), but I had learnt my lesson. Before she could adjust her estimate or worse make more precise (and potentially damaging) predictions about calls from colleges, I begged “No more. Please do not say anything. Don’t tell me.” And judging by the effect her predictions had on my ever happy and imperturbable friend sitting beside me, it was the wisest thing I ever did.

I had tasted blood though and like moth to flame I was drawn back to the topic. This time I told her to give me the general works, but on no condition was she to utter the word ‘college’. Only after listening to her general deductions about me could I really appreciate the close shave I had had with potentially devastating news 5 days earlier than absolutely necessary.

The conclusion of this cardiac rollercoaster: “Don’t tell me” are the smartest three words I ever said. Beware of Mystique.

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