May 31, 2026 • 61 mins
While Mangesh (aka Mango) is busy working on season 2 of his other show, Skyline Drive, we’re revisiting season 1 right here, and we’re up to episode 7! Mangesh travels to India to find a horoscope written about him centuries ago and waiting for him in a shop in rural Tamil Nadu... but it isn't long before everything starts going wrong!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
How about the heart of Kykie put? Okay, 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, doctor Kumar told me.
What happened.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
So you're in the right track.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Something very profound is going to happen to you now.
I mean doctor Kumar did predict I'd be going to
India for this show.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
There's lots of things for you to accomplish, including foreign travels.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
So go to India because that is all the.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Young and wisdom is. And he also said this, you
cannot fail.
Speaker 6 (01:13):
Let's put it as that.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Back in April, I experienced a miracle of astrology. I'd
walked into a random astrologer's office in Queen's and during
my session, the astrologer, doctor 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
(01:41):
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 answer, these little shops hidden across
(02:02):
India that practiced 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 call my aunt's summon and ask her
(02:24):
to be my fixer. When I was in high school,
summon Or Sumanaka and my uncle Giant let me live
and intern with them in Bombay for a summer. They
were running this hotview advertising company called Heartbeat, which had
just made huge waves with this racy condom campaign calltwen Comedy.
(02:49):
Of course, I sat in on the decidedly less racy
creative meetings, which I loved pitching ideas and jingles for
things like washing machine jeans 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
(03:10):
a few years later. But also hanging with Simonika 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.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Today's shopping lists for me coffee jam, a bag of.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Tea, something sweet, and spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
This will be how boring spree.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
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.
Speaker 7 (03:53):
It was really frustrating because I arranged everything.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And Semanaka is waiting for the doctor to call back,
and it's very like she has denay 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,
(04:16):
Dengay 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. Huh oh, he only speaks Hindi.
This is a problem because merry Hindi Boho krab aka.
My Hindi is shit. So I panic, and then I
(04:40):
have an idea. What if her son plays translator for me?
And I realized this is a ridiculous question. But for
the naughty guy, is there any way I could take
Argent with me. Argin, 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
(05:02):
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.
Speaker 8 (05:15):
You'll have to ask him.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, you just call him. Yeah, that can be nice.
The rain pommels the city as I take a cab in,
but I'm happy to see them monsoon. It's both wet
and sunny outside, and everything smells green and earthy. As
(05:40):
the rain continues to fall in the lobby, the hotel
doors are open, and if you look just right between
the swaying palms and the mist, you can spot the
Arabian Sea. I'm fiddling with my recording equipment when I
spot Argine walking in, I'm brilliant. I can't tell you
(06:02):
how happy I am to see him. We're both grayer,
both dads.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
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.
Speaker 9 (06:18):
You know.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
The chum of India is that even if everything's breaking down,
everything's fine.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
You know, everyone has a very.
Speaker 8 (06:27):
Nice, relaxed kind of attitude, like this happens. Yeah, you
can't take life so seriously.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
There's a phrase in India chelta, 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 you're not
(06:53):
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
(07:13):
such a cliche. The only thing I can hope for
now is that doctor Kumar is going to be right twice.
You cannot fail.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
Let's put it as that.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts, I'm Monga'shatika Door. Welcome to
Skyline Drive Chapter one, Straight from Shiva's mouth.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Come from Maya Lanas from Holland.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
This is Bombay. As a kid, Bombay is where I
used to start and end every trip to India. Midnight
arrivals and two a m feasts with relatives who've been
waiting years to see us. The world was bigger than
harder to wrap your arms around, and flights to India
took twenty two hours with multiple layovers and refueling stops.
(08:53):
New York than Paris, than Cairo and 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 chamber,
and it's where I used to borrow old comics and
mad magazines. This is the jim Kana where I learned
(09:18):
to play snooker. This is Xavier's, where my dad studied
and then didn't. It is more delinquent years. This is
the disco where I learned to dance, and Kayber, where
my parents went on their first day. Bombay has always
felt like my city in New York. People correct me
(09:40):
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
is 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.
(10:05):
The thing is, I still feel my dad here, like
a fog that descended on the city ages ago and
refused to burn off a great time.
Speaker 8 (10:18):
But I kind of just got into this relationship, so
I don't know how to navigate.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And she's like all cool and sergent, and I are
standing on a street corner in the Santa Cruz neighborhood
of Bombay and we're waiting to step into the naughty
shop that my aunt someone somehow located for us. From
the outside, the place looks tiny and nondescript, something you'd
overlook if you weren't hunting for it.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
How would you describe it?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Since you're not going There's a fleet of rickshaws going
by us right and the rain is stopped now, But
there were tons of puddles and.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
Lots of cowship that the cow seemed to have moved.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Even in central Bombay, cows owned the road. We're going
to walk into this place to see the nady. Do
you know anything about Natty?
Speaker 8 (11:03):
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.
Speaker 10 (11:15):
Yeah, so I'm hoping this is a great experience.
Speaker 11 (11:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
The funny thing about these naughty 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, like maybe a
(11:43):
wall full of scrolls, or maybe big brass sculptures of
little known deities and saints, or maybe just some wal 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. Of course,
(12:08):
of course, the Natti reader Mukishchi peeks out from behind
a wall to tell us he's doing his morning prayers.
He asks us if we like water or tea while
we wait? How incredible would it be if the first
astrologer I met in India located in an instruction manual
for the rest of my life. What if the leaves
hiding in his archive actually contain my life's purpose? I
(12:31):
am genuinely giddy. The prayers take longer than ten minutes,
but sub cheldda, hey, it all works. We get ushered
into an even tinier room, though this one actually has personality.
It's bright lime green, with a couple of temple calendars
on the wall, and then Mukish walks in with an
(12:51):
armful of wooden bundles. So these are a whole bunch
of squirrels. Actually, Mukeish places the scrolls on his desk
and let's inspect them.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
This is Oh wow, it's engraved.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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.
(13:30):
As we marvel at the tiny lines of text etched
across them, Mukeish explains the origins and what they said
just leaves. He tells us we're etched in the eighteenth century,
when a family made copies of the original millennia old predictions.
The engravings were laborious and the script is tiny. But
these scrolls have lasted because the caretakers meticulously rub them
(13:53):
with oil once a year to preserve them. Here's our
Gin translator.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
This is coming from Tamini, the oldest language in the world,
and it's coming from the Siddhar traditions are some of
the Oldish keepers of knowledge, according to Indiana.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Mukish also tells us that these Nadi shastras or sacred
prophecies have a mythological prominance. Lord Shiva, in his infinite wisdom,
shared this knowledge with the goddess Parverti, his wife, and
then she passed it on to Lord Brahma, who passed
the knowledge from the gods to the sages and then
finally to the priests. And to me, it sounds like
(14:34):
a game of celestial telephone. But Mukish, she tells us
these scrolls are actually less prone to human error than
traditional astrology because the words inscribed here comes straight from God.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
So he is only the reader.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
That the information is directly available and cannot be soiled
by human that as.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Such, Mukesh tells us he's been doing this for twenty
nine years. He shows his 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
is just a reader providing answers for people in need,
(15:18):
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.
Speaker 12 (15:27):
Said that he gave us some methodology directly relating to
the thumpig for which there are under any divisions.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Basically, the whirls 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
(15:58):
meant to be here today. You can only show up
in this room if it's your destiny. Sometimes people have
car accidents trying to get here. Others apparently get dange.
But since I've made it into this room, he tells me,
this is fate.
Speaker 13 (16:13):
If it's also such that at the end of the day,
this is a Yeah, there will be problems. He said
that you must remain in your mind and your heart
quiet because problems will come, problems will go.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, So try.
Speaker 12 (16:31):
And stay calm.
Speaker 6 (16:33):
But it is destiny.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I stare at the income my thumb, remembering this weird
fact for my days at mental floss, that koalas have
fingerprints that could be mistaken for humans. And I laugh
to myself, wondering if my scroll could be mistaken for kualas.
If Mukaishg walks back in and tells me that I'll
enjoy napping in trees for eighteen hours a day, or
if in my older age, I'll really love feasting on eucalyptus,
(16:59):
then I'll know exactly what went wrong. It's the type
of dumb joke that i'd share with someone that cup,
but it's too dumb to make in this room. Over
the next three weeks that I'm in India, my cashful
look and he'll keep touching pace, but he won't find
my scroll. Chapter two, The Thing that matters.
Speaker 9 (17:38):
Yea melon now man local year local k yea sweger
by Rusi the wall local yella local, yea yea melon
luch now mal local k yea local ka yea sweg
rusic the wall local.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
La local area language is curious and how it informs
and reflects I deals. The way my family talks is gentle.
The dialect we speak is sing song ye. My old
roommate Lasako used to tell me it was like butter
when she heard me talking to my mom on the phone.
But if it's sweet and overly polite, it's also not direct.
(18:18):
My dad didn't often talk about the sad things or
the hard things. Often he'd skip over the specifics and
allude to difficulties in terms that were vague but capacious.
So if you were to discuss my cousin Argin, he
might say, it was so hard what he went through.
It's really good. He's back now, which is insufficient. My
(18:43):
cousin Argin is back now, And of course I'd heard
the whispers, but he told me his story.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
I'm also going to try and get you up in
a next show.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
It involves him building townships in the Ivory Coast and.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
Now let's say Ivory Coast, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And then coming back to Dubai to help sort a
multimillion dollar deal.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
I actually shifted to the Middle East. Everyone was like,
what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
It involves a reneged transaction and him taking the fall
for someone else's carelessness.
Speaker 6 (19:16):
I called up and I said, can I come back
now that I sent you your money to clear everything.
He said, come on back, there's no problem. You send
the money, You've cleared everything. I came back and I
got arrested.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It's him being thrown in some of the region's worst
and most violent prisons.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
I did my devils, yeah, got it, and.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Pretending to be a Buddhist so he wouldn't be killed
for being a Hindu.
Speaker 12 (19:42):
Many of them are taking him, but a lot of
them were night.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
It is a story of trauma. I kind of collapsed
in spiritual psychologically and finding a guru who nurtured his resiliency.
Speaker 12 (19:59):
So the guru, actually we can identify within you whether
you're ready or you're still holding back.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
And it's the story of a miracle.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
Because when I came out, I had had a malaria
for fifty days.
Speaker 12 (20:10):
Wow, without medication.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
There was no.
Speaker 6 (20:15):
Practical reason in the world I should have been in life.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
And another my sentence disappeared.
Speaker 12 (20:23):
They could let me go because they didn't know whatever
they were doing to the person that didn't have any
record of any jail sentence.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
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 could have been there forever,
except somehow a mystic told him his court records would disappear,
and they did, and the mystic assured him the jails
would release him on house arrest, and they did. And
(20:53):
then the Guru told him to go. So we hid,
and he waited, and he waited until in darkness he
was stuffed into the bed of a truck, crammed in
with other terrified bodies, and trafficked across borders until he
found his way home. And now it is him being
here in India with me, and still.
Speaker 12 (21:15):
I come out of life once again, keeping that too
many times I've done that.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
It's a way to tell a story without telling a story.
It is vague and capacious and insufficient.
Speaker 6 (21:30):
But he is back now are you?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And it's the thing that matters Chapter three. Believe me,
(22:00):
Despite Makaisha's reputation, I had struck out in Bombay, but
luckily I had come with a backup plan to make
a pilgrimage to Chennai. The truth is, I don't know
anything about Chennai. I've never been, and mostly people in
my family have warned me there's no reason to go,
not because of anything cultural or political, it just comes
(22:21):
down to the weather. Everyone complains about the intense heat
and humidity. But Chennai, which is located in the South
Indian state of Tamil Nadu, is special in terms of Nadi.
According to the story, when the rishi's or holy men
received the wisdom of the gods, they transcribed it onto
leaves and those leaves were protected by generations of South
(22:41):
Indian kings and at some point these manuscripts ended up
in a library in Thunjur, also in Tamil Nadu, And
while some of the copies were loaned out to other
cities like Delhi or Mumbai, the majority of the authentic
Nadi centers stayed local, within driving distance of Chennai. My
friend and story editor Mark has agreed to come with me,
(23:03):
which is a really nice security blanket, and I also
invite Argent. Should I get you a ticket to come
meet us there?
Speaker 9 (23:11):
I would love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Perfect. For a minute, we thought Mark wasn't going to
make it to India. His visa got backlogged. There was
a moment where I wanted to tell him not to
worry Chelseda hey, but even I lost faith by this point. Then,
thanks to God or the Indian embassy or possibly doctor Kumar.
It was approved right before he was set to leave.
(23:35):
It'll be fun, I think. I think the three of
us hanging out will be fun. Yeah, that so cool. Okay, great.
Speaker 14 (23:51):
Judgment.
Speaker 6 (23:52):
I got to.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Almost conradic canash both the rest of dominant Anazi.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
And when we land, where welcome by our drivers atish
and an entire town plastered in chess olympiad posters featuring
a cartoon horse and a DOOTHI because apparently Chennai is
India's chess capital. Besides the posters, which are honestly everywhere,
I'm a little surprised by how little of the language
(24:22):
I can follow. I don't speak a look of Tamil,
the local language here, and neither does Urgent. And the
six or seven languages we can cobble together between the
two of us don't help us in the slightest. So
it's funny how alien I feel in a country where
I'm normally so at home. Speaking of aliens, I should
probably tell you about the strangest person I'll meet on
(24:43):
my entire journey between Mumbai and Chennai. I had stopped
off in Bangalore, a town filled with relatives on one
of those days my Aunt Shila, where Shiluaka introduces me
to a medicine man who supposedly channels the spirit of
Saint Augustina and shakes metal keys as he goes into
a trance to identify what's wrong with your body. Sant Augustinia,
(25:05):
aside from being the Sinda or enlightened soul who's supposedly
brought the natty leaves to humans by taking dictation from
the gods, is also a patron saint of healing. I
try to go into this meeting with an open mind,
but the healer is a character, probably in his sixties,
spry and cocky with a mischievous smile. If I was
(25:27):
trying to cast a South Asian leprechaun for an Indian
Lucky Charms commercial, he'd be on my short list. And
even though his accent is unbelievably thick, like so thick
that I'm working overtime to understand each and every word,
I am captivated by his experience with black magic. What
they do I mean after power people now use. As
(25:55):
he tells it, a neighbor put a voodoo like curse
on him and he kept losing weight and balding and
losing weight and balding, and no one could tell him
what was wrong with him, until when he was sickly
thin and had been robbed of all his glorious plumage,
he found a talisman buried in his backyard. It was
(26:16):
wrapped in rags and hair and blood, all the telltale
signs of black magic. And when he burned it and
reversed the curse, his neighbors had some of the worst
luck ever. They lost their money, their health, even their home.
He grins wide when he tells me about this instant karma.
I honestly don't know what to make of this guy.
On one hand, my aunt told me that after years
(26:39):
of not being able to conceive, it was this man
who gave her the herbs and tinctures to finally carry
a child. Her story is really powerful, and I've heard
so many others that he's helped or cured. But he
also tells me with absolute certainty that Tamil is the
greatest language bar none, because it's the oldest, which is true,
(27:00):
and the most powerful, which I don't quite understand but okay,
and the most sophisticated, which I start to chuckle at
because now there are a lot of descriptors being used,
and I'm sensing a real air of Tamil hubris here.
But then he brings his argument altogether by saying, and
this is the strangest part. It only makes sense that
(27:23):
Tamil is the language that aliens communicate with, but all
speak Tamil. You need to come link the long.
Speaker 15 (27:34):
Type of day.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
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. Okay, it's just
(27:59):
that you chapter four Snake Astronauts coffy copy.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
This place names Kanji. Yes, it has two thousand city
of temples. Yeah, yeah, that's really. You're gonna record your
six o'clock voices?
Speaker 10 (28:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Good, Sorry. I think I had two of those coffee
this morning.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
At six am, and it feels so much earlier. We
drive off the hotel a lot, straight into traffic and
I can only tell where past the city limits when
the cartoon horse posters disappear. Up until this point, it
felt like every advertisement was about chess, but now the
billboards are for toothpaste and soaps and clothes and wedding rings,
(29:05):
and Argent and I both notice how strange it is
that everyone in the ads is incredibly light skinned, and
what a mind fuck that must be. But then I
stopped paying close attention. The drive starts to feel like
every drive I've taken between cities in India. Stretches of
rickety shops, stretches of vibrant villages with kids playing outside,
(29:29):
long dusty in betweens, dotted with fields and factories, banks
and petrol stations. There are these trees that line the
roads with red and white trunks painted that way to
prevent termites. And also the show poachers that the Forestry
Service is keeping watch. Mark and I are both healing
the chently. But Argin's two coffees have definitely kicked in.
(29:51):
He peppers us with questions about life in the States,
about recent Supreme Court cases. He talks about India and
all the miracles he's witnessed that have made him a
true believer, and then he says this, If.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
You study the Hindu Vedic.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Texts, you'll understand that there's a lot of interaction between
snake culture and human culture, and.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
There's a lot of snake version that happens in India.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Okay, so I'm going to pause right here to say
I don't know what's going on with all the 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
(30:48):
as a curse, something she had to transcend with mysterious prayers.
And now Argin is talking about how he read early
Hindu texts about snakes as these superior carriers of a
greater wisdom. And he starts talking about one account you
read from a mystic who claims to have seen these
astral snakes.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
He said that his guru got him to meet one
of the.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Incoming astronauts space snake astronauts.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
Yeah, it feels unbelievable, it's but just.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
The idea of a snake astronaut.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
Yeah, well, I mean like a traveler. Absolutely, he doesn't
wear he didn't have to wear a space suit. And
when you read the book, he says.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
It's it's not possible for me to explain what exactly
I saw, but the snakes are very different than what
you all imagine any.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
And all I can describe to you is it is
blue and glowing.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
In my cursory understanding of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, these
serpent like beings rule over three planes filled with multiple planets,
and they're 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, I feel like
(32:30):
they're this harbinger of what we're about to learn.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
The snakes don't rule over Hell, they rule over a
different set of planets, and they're supposed to be very
opulent creatures.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
Is this in this book versus a different book?
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Mark, who's been quiet this whole time, perks up at
this talk of snake astronauts. He has so many questions
about the origins and about how much Urgent could actually
believe in this, but he mostly just smirks and saves
his commentary for later.
Speaker 15 (33:02):
Yeah, that's that's the problem that I have with That's
the issue whether or not they wear space suits. First
of all, let me imagine that the space suits.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Before long we realize where in Kanji Forum. The temple
town is famous for its beautiful shrines and architecture, along
with its saris, which are gorgeous bolts of rich silk
embroidered with thread dipped in gold. I sit up to
look at the surroundings, noticing these little altars side by
side with banana stands. All of a sudden, so these
(33:42):
turns in and we pull up to one of the
most gorgeous temples I've ever seen. It towers over the
city and I crane my neck to see where its
crown touches the sky. I later learned it's called Akumbary
Short temple. Records of its initials struck date back to
three hundred BCE, and it is stunning like a sixty
(34:04):
meter tall cigarette, except instead of a giant, blocky pyramid,
it has eleven stories of relief work with intricately carved
pillars and depictions of myths and avatars. If the greatest
churches and cathedrals are meant to fill you with awe,
to make you feel humbled in the presence of a
(34:26):
greater beauty, then this temple does the trick. I can't
wait to see the inside, to meet the temple leaf readers.
But as soon as I try to hop out, Sethias
motions me to stay inside. He steps out and gestures
and a man nearby, and the man just shakes his head.
It's clear we're in the wrong place. So something jumps
(34:47):
back in and then we drive and drive. Fifteen minutes later,
we're parked in this dusty lot in front of a
cinderblock wall that feels like it's in the middle of nowhere.
If there wasn't this big yellow sign outside declaring that
this was a house of astrology, I would have assumed
it was a storage facility, or maybe a clinic. Whatever
(35:11):
it is, it's no eleven story carved temple in them.
(35:31):
Chapter five, The waiting Game. We swap mosquitoes and reapply repellent.
We make idle conversation. We look at our phones and
like kids in a car, asking over and over are
we there yet? I walked from the patio into the
little reception area to see if we can get started.
(35:53):
Origin goes in a few times too. After a few
hours of waiting, they finally take my thumbprint. Huish, muggish, Yeah,
I mean, I mean born in America, will follow me.
My father's name is Omish. They put us in the
(36:18):
queue and then we wait some more. Every ten or
fifteen minutes, someone's name is called, and one of the men.
Because it is weirdly, almost all men here, a mix
of middle aged business owners and young people who look
anxious to get married. They start disappearing inside. When it's
finally our turn, we follow the receptionist to the second level.
(36:39):
Despite the thatched roof, it's actually way more modern up
here and welcoming. There are these sliding doors with little
enclosures where people are doing one on ones and Argin,
Mark and I all squeeze into a room. When our
man finally walks in, he's wearing vidithy, these three stripes
across his four head, applied with sacred ash, often associated
(37:03):
with priests. He also has a big pile of scrolls
in his arm. Now this is going to be hard
to follow, but he asks if I speak Tamil, and
then in broken English, he tells us he needs to
find my palm leaf first. He indicates how the scrolls
are like a card catalog. Your thumbprint helps you find
your scroll. Your scroll helps you find your full horoscope,
(37:24):
which is also hidden somewhere in the stacks in the back.
Speaker 11 (37:27):
I am really want to play one bmily, Okay, I
am reading even name father, named mother, name foul tater
or not to leave the confound.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Our reader starts reading the tamil off the scroll. He asks,
your father's dead and your mother's living. I respond yes,
after the com and I want to be a father.
To minute 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 into the back of the bundle and moves on
(38:00):
to the next You were married and living with your wife, Yes,
your mother had two marriages. Ever, no smack. The leaf
goes into the back of the pile. Sometimes when he
starts reading a leaf and sees it doesn't match, he
doesn't even ask. He just moves it to the back,
and this sorting keeps going. He asks if I'm forty five,
(38:20):
and I just laugh. I am enjoying all of this,
feeling like there's real momentum, and I tell him no,
I'm forty two. We keep going and some of it
gets confusing, like he asks if I have two sons,
I have two children. I mean I have a son
(38:44):
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, No, I have.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
One sister nor brother and married it.
Speaker 11 (39:02):
Yeah, yes, marriage by engagement, yes, said you were married
living with the way, yes, but onely one sister, yes,
sister Mari unmarried it. You were married and living with
your white bothered the mother leaving, you were in private
job working.
Speaker 6 (39:22):
And dingo.
Speaker 11 (39:23):
That is it.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
He has found it. After fifteen hours of being on planes,
two weeks of hunting through stacks in Mumbai, another hour
long 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. Urgent thinks I'm blessed.
(39:46):
Mark looks more skeptical, and the three of us we
file downstairs. So what happens to man?
Speaker 16 (39:56):
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. Yeah, and
now you've got the real Now the fun will be
that you will be broadcasting to America your future.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Ship. Right chapter six, Son of a Milkman Sea. We
(40:45):
wait outside a little more and then we're called in
and walked through this long hallway to a room in
the back which faces onto a courtyard. The complex is
bigger than I'd realized, with places to do poojas and
with rooms to rent. As we sit down, mister Kumar,
the same man from reception, double checks that this is
(41:06):
the right file. He goes through some details about my thumb,
that I'm a Brahmin, that I was born on May first,
and then he reads my fileing and family. I'm listening keenly,
but nothing he says here is interesting. He says, my
(41:27):
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 the husband. But here's
the thing. While we're sitting in this room, I have
one of those kaiser SoSE moments from the usual suspects
(41:50):
in the whole scroll section. I'd given away all my details.
Is your mom's name Chitra, No, it's Lolita. Is your
father living, No, he's passed. Is your sister married, Well,
she's engaged. And as I realized this, everything from here
on becomes tainted, Like the predictions are so mundane. You'll
(42:12):
have a good life, you'll get sick, you'll have medicine
and get better, your children will have a good education,
you'll make decent money, You'll have good relationships with others.
I mean, it's just a mishmash of vague things that
happen to everyone and details I've already confirmed. In some ways,
the most surprising thing he says is this line. I
(42:36):
laugh because in some ways this is both the most
ridiculous thing and the most specific thing about me today.
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 would love a car that starts when
you wanted to. Anyway, The rest of the reading is
(42:57):
more of the same. Is basically he's up selling us here.
What I got was the starter pack. We've already paid
for that part, and we put down a healthy tip
on top on his insistence, like Google pay or anything. Okay,
(43:21):
I'll figure that out. And now, if I 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. You're taking Okay,
(43:44):
I step outside to chat with Mark's confused. 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 knotty place to visit.
I'd come all this way and drag Mark and Argin
(44:08):
here because this is where I thought I had the
best chance of finding my fortune, and then nothing.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
Because I counted the bus.
Speaker 15 (44:20):
Yeah, it's like I don't expect grand revelations every time.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
There's a line I didn't catch on tape, but it
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,
(44:45):
I had been born the son of a milkman in
the milk business. You know, in a typical milk vendor family.
Speaker 6 (44:54):
No, just part of it.
Speaker 15 (44:58):
Stirred up with you.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
He tells me that I slept around, and I think
he's saying that I gave my wife STDs. I also
treated my parents horribly and didn't support them. I cheated
my business partners. And I am nodding vigorously and enjoying
this because this part is kind of the realist to me,
(45:23):
like every time someone tells me they've seen a psychic
or a reader and had some revelation in a dream,
they're always a king or queen in their past life.
And to me, it's like, there are not that many
kings in history. How can all of us have been kings?
So weirdly, this is finally a storyline I can buy
into being here smiling at the story. It reminds me
(45:48):
of this thing. The writer Shrethi Ravindrin, who grew up
in Chennai, once wrote how she loves to read and
reread her horoscope because to her it's like a very
soothing work of fan fiction. And she told me about
how sometimes the horoscope feels accurate and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 14 (46:08):
She will be a girl of a restless nature. She
will be a girl of a self destructive timidity her moods.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
But if 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.
Speaker 14 (46:27):
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, like super accurate.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
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. Still it is
(47:03):
pure fun, but when I think about it later, it
won't scratch the itch I actually have, Because, like Shriti,
I wanted to walk into the shop and let someone
take the measure of my life. I'd hope that they
would find my leaf and look into my eyes and
with complete certainty tell me that my life wouldn't be
(47:24):
all bad. And although I made the journey here, and
although those words were said in the end, I just
couldn't believe them. Chapter seven, Spinning. I should be thirty
(47:48):
in a morning. I count ten teams stuck inside anyone.
I'm curiously you can't.
Speaker 6 (47:56):
The demon's lugging in my head.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I can't do shit.
Speaker 6 (48:00):
I've gotta go back to sleeping.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Right now.
Speaker 6 (48:04):
Let him make this as a statement.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
The drive home from the Naughty Shop is somehow so long,
and I feel the clock ticking. We have maybe five
days left on this trip, and I have not felt
the magic here. Nothing has brought me closer to believing.
Margin senses my tension Mark too. I tell Mark, maybe
we should raise to Varnasi in northern India, even though
(48:28):
my astrologer friend he warned me it was like a
Disneyland of astrology.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
If we wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Something totals we care about, you can actually.
Speaker 6 (48:36):
Like top this. I fly to like the Nis.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
There's a university there and a lot of astrology PhDs
and also con men, so maybe there's some fun to
be had. Or we could do what the Nadi reader
told me to do for penance for my sins as
a milkman. I could go to an offering at a
Hanuman temple, and I have a specific one in mind.
My aunt and family lived in this place, and hopefully
(49:05):
it's where my grandfather finds hired through the.
Speaker 6 (49:08):
House is called gin house.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
I don't know. I mean, I am just throwing ideas
at the wall. We stopped for lunch at this place.
Our drivers at the shloves where they serve giant heaping
plates of rice on banana leaves with curries and chutneys
ladled on top. We eat with our hands in the
traditional style, shoveling the piping hot food into our mouths.
I pairamne with the thumbs up an Indian coke of sorts,
(49:34):
and while the food fills our bellies, it doesn't calm
my nerves, and I grow increasingly irritated about my journey
to the Naughty Shop. A few days later, when I
start reviewing my tape, I realized I've missed a crucial detail.
A woman I'd interviewed previously named Malti Das had walked
(49:55):
into a Naughty Shop a skeptic and walked out a believer,
not because of what she heard from the reader exactly,
but because of what she saw.
Speaker 7 (50:04):
I was looking very disinterested. So that man, I've me, ma'am,
can you read tamb It? I said, yes, very well,
I can read tamb It. Then he started showing the
family to me. After a point, then he said, that's
your father's name start with A.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
They said yes, and then I could see the.
Speaker 7 (50:24):
Name written there of my mother in law, Arakiaswami in devil.
Speaker 12 (50:29):
That was when it hit me.
Speaker 7 (50:30):
Really, you know, I thought, Okay, there is something here.
Speaker 15 (50:33):
They're not bluffing.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Then I feel like an idiot. I hadn't thought to
photograph my leaf. I mean, I don't know if they
would have let me, but maybe there was a miracle
lurking in there. Not in the prophecy, which I thought
was so vague, but in the sorting system. Was there
something beautiful I had missed? When Mark and I talked
(50:55):
about it later at our hotel bar, Mark is a
different perspective on the play.
Speaker 15 (51:00):
Yes, it's basically like a magic trk that we couldn't.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
See there were vi. Yeah, it was like hearing it
was like hearing a magic trek. As he puts it,
it doesn't matter if it's real, because the shop is
in the business of hope and I think about how
he's right, Like, there's so many people that come in
such desperate situations, right, Like if you hear you're like
going to have a comfortable life, You're gonna get a
new car, and you're gonna like, you know, like.
Speaker 15 (51:27):
Four to five years, you're gonna watch her out.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah, I mean like like that probably like sustains a
lot of people, right, that would be such a big
deal to a certain kind of Perth, Chapter eight, Double Dose.
(51:52):
Months later, my memories of Chennai are blur early morning,
strong coffee, ceiling fans that are no match for the heat.
But mostly it's just car ride. Hours in the car
with Argin talking about philosophy and science and our childhoods,
the moments we were too proud, the moments that humbled us,
(52:14):
and how we got here. If Bombay felt like an
old friend whose path had diverged from my own, then
Argin was like a close friend I had lost and
then found again. And it's funny that he's here with
me because I'd forgotten that Argin had been warned by
his Guru that he should not, at any cost dabble
(52:34):
in astrology, something I'm reminded of when my wife Lizzie calls, hey, Lilie, wait,
he'll for your answergure.
Speaker 16 (52:45):
Well, he here is my brother at the end of
the day, and I wasn't going to abandon him.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
But there's a phrase I grew up using in India
cousin brother and cousin sister in joint families. You grew
up thinking of your cousins as closer than just a cousin.
You tie rocky to them or these promised threads that
promise love and protection, and you treat your cousins like
their siblings because they are in a way. And the
(53:14):
fact that Argin is here with me now, despite the
oceans between us, despite the time that's past.
Speaker 5 (53:21):
But having said that, this is my first experience with
astrology as well, so I was actually warned not to
dabble in these kind of.
Speaker 6 (53:32):
Subjects. Is subjecting you to things you've been avoided, just
you know, venting you with yeah, tempting you with taboo subjects. Shame, shame,
that's right. He's the bad influence in my life.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Argin has told me what he's been through, but I
can't imagine it. It is too horrifying. And I admire
him so much. How he somehow pulled together his family
and picked up the shards of his life. Life, and
how he keeps moving forward with such grace and humility.
If my days in Chennai were a blur of endless
(54:09):
car rides, the final pit stops were always a seat
at the hotel bar. Sometimes it was me and Mark,
sometimes it was Argin and me, and occasionally it was
the three of us sitting in a dimly lit patio,
chewing away mosquitoes as we sipped on these fresh lime sodas.
On the tougher days, I'd cut the soda with gin
(54:30):
and bumb a cigarette off of Virgin. And on one
of those nights, Argin told us about his sud Saddi,
the seven and a half years of bad luck brought
on by Saturn that everyone experiences at some point according
to Vade the Astrology, and his seven and a half years.
He tells us, we're considered especially bad.
Speaker 10 (54:53):
Oh well, I experienced a double suck Serty almost and
mine pretty much game.
Speaker 6 (54:58):
Up for so I've had really shit luckily, really shit lucky.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Until this moment, Argin 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 lets us in on just
how hard his life one but my.
Speaker 10 (55:20):
Name DA last year and I'm still trying to understand
the difference, 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.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah, that's crazy. I didn't really because this is India.
Argent jokingly links his misfortune back to what he must
have done in his past lives.
Speaker 6 (55:49):
Obviously that much more than this past August.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
I mean, Argent does not believe in astrology. I never
asked him to get a reading, but trology has happened
to him. The shadow of that seven and a half
years of bad luck. It's 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,
(56:15):
Mark says that 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
(56:37):
about my life about my dad, it is not going
to be with him or our Jim, and it's not
going to be through astrology. Astrology was never the point.
And 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.
(57:02):
I really do, but I don't listen because I'm not
thinking clearly. I haven't been thinking clearly this whole time,
this whole show. Instead, I asked Sapphis to race me
across the state. I drag ardin along, I collect interviews
that will not add up to much, and then just
(57:33):
when my time in India is nearly up, I realize
Mark is right, and I spend sixteen hours in a
car to find meaning where I should have been looking
all along. Thank you so much for not forgetting about
(58:11):
our little show. Skyline Drive is a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeart Podcast. This show is hosted and written by
me Monga Shaiitigudur And yes, I know this episode was
so long, but I'm about to make it longer with
these credits. Mary Full of Sandy is our supervising producer.
How would we get the show out without Mary? The
answer is we would not. Meetropinshahi is our delightful producer
(58:34):
and conducted the interview with Shirty. Mark Lotto is my
excellent story editor and was such a trooper for suffering
with me in India in a city I knew nothing about,
though I did feed him lots of paratas. This episode
was also produced by the insanely talented Anna Rubinova. I
don't know how we could have got through this much
tape without her. Anna, you are a boon to the show.
(58:56):
The super sweet Drove Chevarrau hit the streets for this
episode and collected extra tape for me. This episode was
mixed by my pal at Soundboard. Oh my gosh the Warning.
The warning was read by producer extraordinaire Nadia Raymond, who
won the first ever Audio Pulitzer along with the team
at This American Life. Nadia wants you to listen to
(59:16):
THL's next episode, but I want you to know she's
a badass. I've got to thank my pal Botany for
the theme song and the compositions. Also Azadi Records. How
can I thank Azadi enough? Also my friends Kiman Shou, Suri, Peter,
Matthew Bauer and Motor Sailed and I can't forget my
pal Vage aka Lush Life for lending me his tunes
(59:36):
as well. I am dropping a second mixtape with more
music from Skyline Drive Volume two. It'll be in the
show links, please go check it out. Additional production and
research support from my love Lizzie Jacobs, Someone Rock around
the Clock Buckshie and my beautiful cousin Arjin Buckshi Arjun,
I love you. This show is executive produced from iHeart,
(01:00:00):
My Good Palace, Nikki Etour and Katrina Norvel and a
shout out to Nikki's baby girl Pearl and also Enzo Enzo,
I have not forgotten about you, buddy. Also got to
thank my incredible partners from Kaleidoscope Oswell Listen, Kate Osborne,
Costos Linos, Vahini Shorey You inspire me every day. Special
(01:00:20):
thanks to Ali, Nathan Connell, will and Bob at iHeart
for getting behind the show, Barkley Sorrow Vinshanta, my Kiddos,
Henry and Ruby, my family everywhere, and as always a
big big thank you to my Amma and my dad,
Lalita and Umesh articular, who I thank my lucky stars for.
(01:00:40):
We have one more episode to go, so thank you
so much for listening. I can't tell you how much
it means to me
Speaker 6 (01:01:01):
To christ
Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
How about the heart of Kykie put? Okay, 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, doctor Kumar told me.
What happened.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
So you're in the right track.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Something very profound is going to happen to you now.
I mean doctor Kumar did predict I'd be going to
India for this show.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
There's lots of things for you to accomplish, including foreign travels.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
So go to India because that is all the.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Young and wisdom is. And he also said this, you
cannot fail.
Speaker 6 (01:13):
Let's put it as that.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Back in April, I experienced a miracle of astrology. I'd
walked into a random astrologer's office in Queen's and during
my session, the astrologer, doctor 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
(01:41):
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 answer, these little shops hidden across
(02:02):
India that practiced 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 call my aunt's summon and ask her
(02:24):
to be my fixer. When I was in high school,
summon Or Sumanaka and my uncle Giant let me live
and intern with them in Bombay for a summer. They
were running this hotview advertising company called Heartbeat, which had
just made huge waves with this racy condom campaign calltwen Comedy.
(02:49):
Of course, I sat in on the decidedly less racy
creative meetings, which I loved pitching ideas and jingles for
things like washing machine jeans 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
(03:10):
a few years later. But also hanging with Simonika 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.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Today's shopping lists for me coffee jam, a bag of.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Tea, something sweet, and spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
This will be how boring spree.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
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.
Speaker 7 (03:53):
It was really frustrating because I arranged everything.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And Semanaka is waiting for the doctor to call back,
and it's very like she has denay 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,
(04:16):
Dengay 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. Huh oh, he only speaks Hindi.
This is a problem because merry Hindi Boho krab aka.
My Hindi is shit. So I panic, and then I
(04:40):
have an idea. What if her son plays translator for me?
And I realized this is a ridiculous question. But for
the naughty guy, is there any way I could take
Argent with me. Argin, 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
(05:02):
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.
Speaker 8 (05:15):
You'll have to ask him.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, you just call him. Yeah, that can be nice.
The rain pommels the city as I take a cab in,
but I'm happy to see them monsoon. It's both wet
and sunny outside, and everything smells green and earthy. As
(05:40):
the rain continues to fall in the lobby, the hotel
doors are open, and if you look just right between
the swaying palms and the mist, you can spot the
Arabian Sea. I'm fiddling with my recording equipment when I
spot Argine walking in, I'm brilliant. I can't tell you
(06:02):
how happy I am to see him. We're both grayer,
both dads.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
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.
Speaker 9 (06:18):
You know.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
The chum of India is that even if everything's breaking down,
everything's fine.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
You know, everyone has a very.
Speaker 8 (06:27):
Nice, relaxed kind of attitude, like this happens. Yeah, you
can't take life so seriously.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
There's a phrase in India chelta, 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 you're not
(06:53):
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
(07:13):
such a cliche. The only thing I can hope for
now is that doctor Kumar is going to be right twice.
You cannot fail.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
Let's put it as that.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts, I'm Monga'shatika Door. Welcome to
Skyline Drive Chapter one, Straight from Shiva's mouth.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Come from Maya Lanas from Holland.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
This is Bombay. As a kid, Bombay is where I
used to start and end every trip to India. Midnight
arrivals and two a m feasts with relatives who've been
waiting years to see us. The world was bigger than
harder to wrap your arms around, and flights to India
took twenty two hours with multiple layovers and refueling stops.
(08:53):
New York than Paris, than Cairo and 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 chamber,
and it's where I used to borrow old comics and
mad magazines. This is the jim Kana where I learned
(09:18):
to play snooker. This is Xavier's, where my dad studied
and then didn't. It is more delinquent years. This is
the disco where I learned to dance, and Kayber, where
my parents went on their first day. Bombay has always
felt like my city in New York. People correct me
(09:40):
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
is 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.
(10:05):
The thing is, I still feel my dad here, like
a fog that descended on the city ages ago and
refused to burn off a great time.
Speaker 8 (10:18):
But I kind of just got into this relationship, so
I don't know how to navigate.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And she's like all cool and sergent, and I are
standing on a street corner in the Santa Cruz neighborhood
of Bombay and we're waiting to step into the naughty
shop that my aunt someone somehow located for us. From
the outside, the place looks tiny and nondescript, something you'd
overlook if you weren't hunting for it.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
How would you describe it?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Since you're not going There's a fleet of rickshaws going
by us right and the rain is stopped now, But
there were tons of puddles and.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
Lots of cowship that the cow seemed to have moved.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Even in central Bombay, cows owned the road. We're going
to walk into this place to see the nady. Do
you know anything about Natty?
Speaker 8 (11:03):
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.
Speaker 10 (11:15):
Yeah, so I'm hoping this is a great experience.
Speaker 11 (11:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
The funny thing about these naughty 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, like maybe a
(11:43):
wall full of scrolls, or maybe big brass sculptures of
little known deities and saints, or maybe just some wal 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. Of course,
(12:08):
of course, the Natti reader Mukishchi peeks out from behind
a wall to tell us he's doing his morning prayers.
He asks us if we like water or tea while
we wait? How incredible would it be if the first
astrologer I met in India located in an instruction manual
for the rest of my life. What if the leaves
hiding in his archive actually contain my life's purpose? I
(12:31):
am genuinely giddy. The prayers take longer than ten minutes,
but sub cheldda, hey, it all works. We get ushered
into an even tinier room, though this one actually has personality.
It's bright lime green, with a couple of temple calendars
on the wall, and then Mukish walks in with an
(12:51):
armful of wooden bundles. So these are a whole bunch
of squirrels. Actually, Mukeish places the scrolls on his desk
and let's inspect them.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
This is Oh wow, it's engraved.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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.
(13:30):
As we marvel at the tiny lines of text etched
across them, Mukeish explains the origins and what they said
just leaves. He tells us we're etched in the eighteenth century,
when a family made copies of the original millennia old predictions.
The engravings were laborious and the script is tiny. But
these scrolls have lasted because the caretakers meticulously rub them
(13:53):
with oil once a year to preserve them. Here's our
Gin translator.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
This is coming from Tamini, the oldest language in the world,
and it's coming from the Siddhar traditions are some of
the Oldish keepers of knowledge, according to Indiana.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Mukish also tells us that these Nadi shastras or sacred
prophecies have a mythological prominance. Lord Shiva, in his infinite wisdom,
shared this knowledge with the goddess Parverti, his wife, and
then she passed it on to Lord Brahma, who passed
the knowledge from the gods to the sages and then
finally to the priests. And to me, it sounds like
(14:34):
a game of celestial telephone. But Mukish, she tells us
these scrolls are actually less prone to human error than
traditional astrology because the words inscribed here comes straight from God.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
So he is only the reader.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
That the information is directly available and cannot be soiled
by human that as.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Such, Mukesh tells us he's been doing this for twenty
nine years. He shows his 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
is just a reader providing answers for people in need,
(15:18):
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.
Speaker 12 (15:27):
Said that he gave us some methodology directly relating to
the thumpig for which there are under any divisions.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Basically, the whirls 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
(15:58):
meant to be here today. You can only show up
in this room if it's your destiny. Sometimes people have
car accidents trying to get here. Others apparently get dange.
But since I've made it into this room, he tells me,
this is fate.
Speaker 13 (16:13):
If it's also such that at the end of the day,
this is a Yeah, there will be problems. He said
that you must remain in your mind and your heart
quiet because problems will come, problems will go.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, So try.
Speaker 12 (16:31):
And stay calm.
Speaker 6 (16:33):
But it is destiny.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I stare at the income my thumb, remembering this weird
fact for my days at mental floss, that koalas have
fingerprints that could be mistaken for humans. And I laugh
to myself, wondering if my scroll could be mistaken for kualas.
If Mukaishg walks back in and tells me that I'll
enjoy napping in trees for eighteen hours a day, or
if in my older age, I'll really love feasting on eucalyptus,
(16:59):
then I'll know exactly what went wrong. It's the type
of dumb joke that i'd share with someone that cup,
but it's too dumb to make in this room. Over
the next three weeks that I'm in India, my cashful
look and he'll keep touching pace, but he won't find
my scroll. Chapter two, The Thing that matters.
Speaker 9 (17:38):
Yea melon now man local year local k yea sweger
by Rusi the wall local yella local, yea yea melon
luch now mal local k yea local ka yea sweg
rusic the wall local.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
La local area language is curious and how it informs
and reflects I deals. The way my family talks is gentle.
The dialect we speak is sing song ye. My old
roommate Lasako used to tell me it was like butter
when she heard me talking to my mom on the phone.
But if it's sweet and overly polite, it's also not direct.
(18:18):
My dad didn't often talk about the sad things or
the hard things. Often he'd skip over the specifics and
allude to difficulties in terms that were vague but capacious.
So if you were to discuss my cousin Argin, he
might say, it was so hard what he went through.
It's really good. He's back now, which is insufficient. My
(18:43):
cousin Argin is back now, And of course I'd heard
the whispers, but he told me his story.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
I'm also going to try and get you up in
a next show.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
It involves him building townships in the Ivory Coast and.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
Now let's say Ivory Coast, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And then coming back to Dubai to help sort a
multimillion dollar deal.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
I actually shifted to the Middle East. Everyone was like,
what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
It involves a reneged transaction and him taking the fall
for someone else's carelessness.
Speaker 6 (19:16):
I called up and I said, can I come back
now that I sent you your money to clear everything.
He said, come on back, there's no problem. You send
the money, You've cleared everything. I came back and I
got arrested.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It's him being thrown in some of the region's worst
and most violent prisons.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
I did my devils, yeah, got it, and.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Pretending to be a Buddhist so he wouldn't be killed
for being a Hindu.
Speaker 12 (19:42):
Many of them are taking him, but a lot of
them were night.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
It is a story of trauma. I kind of collapsed
in spiritual psychologically and finding a guru who nurtured his resiliency.
Speaker 12 (19:59):
So the guru, actually we can identify within you whether
you're ready or you're still holding back.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
And it's the story of a miracle.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
Because when I came out, I had had a malaria
for fifty days.
Speaker 12 (20:10):
Wow, without medication.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
There was no.
Speaker 6 (20:15):
Practical reason in the world I should have been in life.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
And another my sentence disappeared.
Speaker 12 (20:23):
They could let me go because they didn't know whatever
they were doing to the person that didn't have any
record of any jail sentence.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
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 could have been there forever,
except somehow a mystic told him his court records would disappear,
and they did, and the mystic assured him the jails
would release him on house arrest, and they did. And
(20:53):
then the Guru told him to go. So we hid,
and he waited, and he waited until in darkness he
was stuffed into the bed of a truck, crammed in
with other terrified bodies, and trafficked across borders until he
found his way home. And now it is him being
here in India with me, and still.
Speaker 12 (21:15):
I come out of life once again, keeping that too
many times I've done that.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
It's a way to tell a story without telling a story.
It is vague and capacious and insufficient.
Speaker 6 (21:30):
But he is back now are you?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And it's the thing that matters Chapter three. Believe me,
(22:00):
Despite Makaisha's reputation, I had struck out in Bombay, but
luckily I had come with a backup plan to make
a pilgrimage to Chennai. The truth is, I don't know
anything about Chennai. I've never been, and mostly people in
my family have warned me there's no reason to go,
not because of anything cultural or political, it just comes
(22:21):
down to the weather. Everyone complains about the intense heat
and humidity. But Chennai, which is located in the South
Indian state of Tamil Nadu, is special in terms of Nadi.
According to the story, when the rishi's or holy men
received the wisdom of the gods, they transcribed it onto
leaves and those leaves were protected by generations of South
(22:41):
Indian kings and at some point these manuscripts ended up
in a library in Thunjur, also in Tamil Nadu, And
while some of the copies were loaned out to other
cities like Delhi or Mumbai, the majority of the authentic
Nadi centers stayed local, within driving distance of Chennai. My
friend and story editor Mark has agreed to come with me,
(23:03):
which is a really nice security blanket, and I also
invite Argent. Should I get you a ticket to come
meet us there?
Speaker 9 (23:11):
I would love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Perfect. For a minute, we thought Mark wasn't going to
make it to India. His visa got backlogged. There was
a moment where I wanted to tell him not to
worry Chelseda hey, but even I lost faith by this point. Then,
thanks to God or the Indian embassy or possibly doctor Kumar.
It was approved right before he was set to leave.
(23:35):
It'll be fun, I think. I think the three of
us hanging out will be fun. Yeah, that so cool. Okay, great.
Speaker 14 (23:51):
Judgment.
Speaker 6 (23:52):
I got to.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Almost conradic canash both the rest of dominant Anazi.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
And when we land, where welcome by our drivers atish
and an entire town plastered in chess olympiad posters featuring
a cartoon horse and a DOOTHI because apparently Chennai is
India's chess capital. Besides the posters, which are honestly everywhere,
I'm a little surprised by how little of the language
(24:22):
I can follow. I don't speak a look of Tamil,
the local language here, and neither does Urgent. And the
six or seven languages we can cobble together between the
two of us don't help us in the slightest. So
it's funny how alien I feel in a country where
I'm normally so at home. Speaking of aliens, I should
probably tell you about the strangest person I'll meet on
(24:43):
my entire journey between Mumbai and Chennai. I had stopped
off in Bangalore, a town filled with relatives on one
of those days my Aunt Shila, where Shiluaka introduces me
to a medicine man who supposedly channels the spirit of
Saint Augustina and shakes metal keys as he goes into
a trance to identify what's wrong with your body. Sant Augustinia,
(25:05):
aside from being the Sinda or enlightened soul who's supposedly
brought the natty leaves to humans by taking dictation from
the gods, is also a patron saint of healing. I
try to go into this meeting with an open mind,
but the healer is a character, probably in his sixties,
spry and cocky with a mischievous smile. If I was
(25:27):
trying to cast a South Asian leprechaun for an Indian
Lucky Charms commercial, he'd be on my short list. And
even though his accent is unbelievably thick, like so thick
that I'm working overtime to understand each and every word,
I am captivated by his experience with black magic. What
they do I mean after power people now use. As
(25:55):
he tells it, a neighbor put a voodoo like curse
on him and he kept losing weight and balding and
losing weight and balding, and no one could tell him
what was wrong with him, until when he was sickly
thin and had been robbed of all his glorious plumage,
he found a talisman buried in his backyard. It was
(26:16):
wrapped in rags and hair and blood, all the telltale
signs of black magic. And when he burned it and
reversed the curse, his neighbors had some of the worst
luck ever. They lost their money, their health, even their home.
He grins wide when he tells me about this instant karma.
I honestly don't know what to make of this guy.
On one hand, my aunt told me that after years
(26:39):
of not being able to conceive, it was this man
who gave her the herbs and tinctures to finally carry
a child. Her story is really powerful, and I've heard
so many others that he's helped or cured. But he
also tells me with absolute certainty that Tamil is the
greatest language bar none, because it's the oldest, which is true,
(27:00):
and the most powerful, which I don't quite understand but okay,
and the most sophisticated, which I start to chuckle at
because now there are a lot of descriptors being used,
and I'm sensing a real air of Tamil hubris here.
But then he brings his argument altogether by saying, and
this is the strangest part. It only makes sense that
(27:23):
Tamil is the language that aliens communicate with, but all
speak Tamil. You need to come link the long.
Speaker 15 (27:34):
Type of day.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
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. Okay, it's just
(27:59):
that you chapter four Snake Astronauts coffy copy.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
This place names Kanji. Yes, it has two thousand city
of temples. Yeah, yeah, that's really. You're gonna record your
six o'clock voices?
Speaker 10 (28:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Good, Sorry. I think I had two of those coffee
this morning.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
At six am, and it feels so much earlier. We
drive off the hotel a lot, straight into traffic and
I can only tell where past the city limits when
the cartoon horse posters disappear. Up until this point, it
felt like every advertisement was about chess, but now the
billboards are for toothpaste and soaps and clothes and wedding rings,
(29:05):
and Argent and I both notice how strange it is
that everyone in the ads is incredibly light skinned, and
what a mind fuck that must be. But then I
stopped paying close attention. The drive starts to feel like
every drive I've taken between cities in India. Stretches of
rickety shops, stretches of vibrant villages with kids playing outside,
(29:29):
long dusty in betweens, dotted with fields and factories, banks
and petrol stations. There are these trees that line the
roads with red and white trunks painted that way to
prevent termites. And also the show poachers that the Forestry
Service is keeping watch. Mark and I are both healing
the chently. But Argin's two coffees have definitely kicked in.
(29:51):
He peppers us with questions about life in the States,
about recent Supreme Court cases. He talks about India and
all the miracles he's witnessed that have made him a
true believer, and then he says this, If.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
You study the Hindu Vedic.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Texts, you'll understand that there's a lot of interaction between
snake culture and human culture, and.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
There's a lot of snake version that happens in India.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Okay, so I'm going to pause right here to say
I don't know what's going on with all the 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
(30:48):
as a curse, something she had to transcend with mysterious prayers.
And now Argin is talking about how he read early
Hindu texts about snakes as these superior carriers of a
greater wisdom. And he starts talking about one account you
read from a mystic who claims to have seen these
astral snakes.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
He said that his guru got him to meet one
of the.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Incoming astronauts space snake astronauts.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
Yeah, it feels unbelievable, it's but just.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
The idea of a snake astronaut.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
Yeah, well, I mean like a traveler. Absolutely, he doesn't
wear he didn't have to wear a space suit. And
when you read the book, he says.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
It's it's not possible for me to explain what exactly
I saw, but the snakes are very different than what
you all imagine any.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
And all I can describe to you is it is
blue and glowing.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
In my cursory understanding of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, these
serpent like beings rule over three planes filled with multiple planets,
and they're 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, I feel like
(32:30):
they're this harbinger of what we're about to learn.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
The snakes don't rule over Hell, they rule over a
different set of planets, and they're supposed to be very
opulent creatures.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
Is this in this book versus a different book?
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Mark, who's been quiet this whole time, perks up at
this talk of snake astronauts. He has so many questions
about the origins and about how much Urgent could actually
believe in this, but he mostly just smirks and saves
his commentary for later.
Speaker 15 (33:02):
Yeah, that's that's the problem that I have with That's
the issue whether or not they wear space suits. First
of all, let me imagine that the space suits.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Before long we realize where in Kanji Forum. The temple
town is famous for its beautiful shrines and architecture, along
with its saris, which are gorgeous bolts of rich silk
embroidered with thread dipped in gold. I sit up to
look at the surroundings, noticing these little altars side by
side with banana stands. All of a sudden, so these
(33:42):
turns in and we pull up to one of the
most gorgeous temples I've ever seen. It towers over the
city and I crane my neck to see where its
crown touches the sky. I later learned it's called Akumbary
Short temple. Records of its initials struck date back to
three hundred BCE, and it is stunning like a sixty
(34:04):
meter tall cigarette, except instead of a giant, blocky pyramid,
it has eleven stories of relief work with intricately carved
pillars and depictions of myths and avatars. If the greatest
churches and cathedrals are meant to fill you with awe,
to make you feel humbled in the presence of a
(34:26):
greater beauty, then this temple does the trick. I can't
wait to see the inside, to meet the temple leaf readers.
But as soon as I try to hop out, Sethias
motions me to stay inside. He steps out and gestures
and a man nearby, and the man just shakes his head.
It's clear we're in the wrong place. So something jumps
(34:47):
back in and then we drive and drive. Fifteen minutes later,
we're parked in this dusty lot in front of a
cinderblock wall that feels like it's in the middle of nowhere.
If there wasn't this big yellow sign outside declaring that
this was a house of astrology, I would have assumed
it was a storage facility, or maybe a clinic. Whatever
(35:11):
it is, it's no eleven story carved temple in them.
(35:31):
Chapter five, The waiting Game. We swap mosquitoes and reapply repellent.
We make idle conversation. We look at our phones and
like kids in a car, asking over and over are
we there yet? I walked from the patio into the
little reception area to see if we can get started.
(35:53):
Origin goes in a few times too. After a few
hours of waiting, they finally take my thumbprint. Huish, muggish, Yeah,
I mean, I mean born in America, will follow me.
My father's name is Omish. They put us in the
(36:18):
queue and then we wait some more. Every ten or
fifteen minutes, someone's name is called, and one of the men.
Because it is weirdly, almost all men here, a mix
of middle aged business owners and young people who look
anxious to get married. They start disappearing inside. When it's
finally our turn, we follow the receptionist to the second level.
(36:39):
Despite the thatched roof, it's actually way more modern up
here and welcoming. There are these sliding doors with little
enclosures where people are doing one on ones and Argin,
Mark and I all squeeze into a room. When our
man finally walks in, he's wearing vidithy, these three stripes
across his four head, applied with sacred ash, often associated
(37:03):
with priests. He also has a big pile of scrolls
in his arm. Now this is going to be hard
to follow, but he asks if I speak Tamil, and
then in broken English, he tells us he needs to
find my palm leaf first. He indicates how the scrolls
are like a card catalog. Your thumbprint helps you find
your scroll. Your scroll helps you find your full horoscope,
(37:24):
which is also hidden somewhere in the stacks in the back.
Speaker 11 (37:27):
I am really want to play one bmily, Okay, I
am reading even name father, named mother, name foul tater
or not to leave the confound.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Our reader starts reading the tamil off the scroll. He asks,
your father's dead and your mother's living. I respond yes,
after the com and I want to be a father.
To minute 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 into the back of the bundle and moves on
(38:00):
to the next You were married and living with your wife, Yes,
your mother had two marriages. Ever, no smack. The leaf
goes into the back of the pile. Sometimes when he
starts reading a leaf and sees it doesn't match, he
doesn't even ask. He just moves it to the back,
and this sorting keeps going. He asks if I'm forty five,
(38:20):
and I just laugh. I am enjoying all of this,
feeling like there's real momentum, and I tell him no,
I'm forty two. We keep going and some of it
gets confusing, like he asks if I have two sons,
I have two children. I mean I have a son
(38:44):
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, No, I have.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
One sister nor brother and married it.
Speaker 11 (39:02):
Yeah, yes, marriage by engagement, yes, said you were married
living with the way, yes, but onely one sister, yes,
sister Mari unmarried it. You were married and living with
your white bothered the mother leaving, you were in private
job working.
Speaker 6 (39:22):
And dingo.
Speaker 11 (39:23):
That is it.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
He has found it. After fifteen hours of being on planes,
two weeks of hunting through stacks in Mumbai, another hour
long 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. Urgent thinks I'm blessed.
(39:46):
Mark looks more skeptical, and the three of us we
file downstairs. So what happens to man?
Speaker 16 (39:56):
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. Yeah, and
now you've got the real Now the fun will be
that you will be broadcasting to America your future.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Ship. Right chapter six, Son of a Milkman Sea. We
(40:45):
wait outside a little more and then we're called in
and walked through this long hallway to a room in
the back which faces onto a courtyard. The complex is
bigger than I'd realized, with places to do poojas and
with rooms to rent. As we sit down, mister Kumar,
the same man from reception, double checks that this is
(41:06):
the right file. He goes through some details about my thumb,
that I'm a Brahmin, that I was born on May first,
and then he reads my fileing and family. I'm listening keenly,
but nothing he says here is interesting. He says, my
(41:27):
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 the husband. But here's
the thing. While we're sitting in this room, I have
one of those kaiser SoSE moments from the usual suspects
(41:50):
in the whole scroll section. I'd given away all my details.
Is your mom's name Chitra, No, it's Lolita. Is your
father living, No, he's passed. Is your sister married, Well,
she's engaged. And as I realized this, everything from here
on becomes tainted, Like the predictions are so mundane. You'll
(42:12):
have a good life, you'll get sick, you'll have medicine
and get better, your children will have a good education,
you'll make decent money, You'll have good relationships with others.
I mean, it's just a mishmash of vague things that
happen to everyone and details I've already confirmed. In some ways,
the most surprising thing he says is this line. I
(42:36):
laugh because in some ways this is both the most
ridiculous thing and the most specific thing about me today.
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 would love a car that starts when
you wanted to. Anyway, The rest of the reading is
(42:57):
more of the same. Is basically he's up selling us here.
What I got was the starter pack. We've already paid
for that part, and we put down a healthy tip
on top on his insistence, like Google pay or anything. Okay,
(43:21):
I'll figure that out. And now, if I 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. You're taking Okay,
(43:44):
I step outside to chat with Mark's confused. 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 knotty place to visit.
I'd come all this way and drag Mark and Argin
(44:08):
here because this is where I thought I had the
best chance of finding my fortune, and then nothing.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
Because I counted the bus.
Speaker 15 (44:20):
Yeah, it's like I don't expect grand revelations every time.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
There's a line I didn't catch on tape, but it
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,
(44:45):
I had been born the son of a milkman in
the milk business. You know, in a typical milk vendor family.
Speaker 6 (44:54):
No, just part of it.
Speaker 15 (44:58):
Stirred up with you.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
He tells me that I slept around, and I think
he's saying that I gave my wife STDs. I also
treated my parents horribly and didn't support them. I cheated
my business partners. And I am nodding vigorously and enjoying
this because this part is kind of the realist to me,
(45:23):
like every time someone tells me they've seen a psychic
or a reader and had some revelation in a dream,
they're always a king or queen in their past life.
And to me, it's like, there are not that many
kings in history. How can all of us have been kings?
So weirdly, this is finally a storyline I can buy
into being here smiling at the story. It reminds me
(45:48):
of this thing. The writer Shrethi Ravindrin, who grew up
in Chennai, once wrote how she loves to read and
reread her horoscope because to her it's like a very
soothing work of fan fiction. And she told me about
how sometimes the horoscope feels accurate and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 14 (46:08):
She will be a girl of a restless nature. She
will be a girl of a self destructive timidity her moods.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
But if 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.
Speaker 14 (46:27):
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, like super accurate.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
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. Still it is
(47:03):
pure fun, but when I think about it later, it
won't scratch the itch I actually have, Because, like Shriti,
I wanted to walk into the shop and let someone
take the measure of my life. I'd hope that they
would find my leaf and look into my eyes and
with complete certainty tell me that my life wouldn't be
(47:24):
all bad. And although I made the journey here, and
although those words were said in the end, I just
couldn't believe them. Chapter seven, Spinning. I should be thirty
(47:48):
in a morning. I count ten teams stuck inside anyone.
I'm curiously you can't.
Speaker 6 (47:56):
The demon's lugging in my head.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I can't do shit.
Speaker 6 (48:00):
I've gotta go back to sleeping.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Right now.
Speaker 6 (48:04):
Let him make this as a statement.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
The drive home from the Naughty Shop is somehow so long,
and I feel the clock ticking. We have maybe five
days left on this trip, and I have not felt
the magic here. Nothing has brought me closer to believing.
Margin senses my tension Mark too. I tell Mark, maybe
we should raise to Varnasi in northern India, even though
(48:28):
my astrologer friend he warned me it was like a
Disneyland of astrology.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
If we wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Something totals we care about, you can actually.
Speaker 6 (48:36):
Like top this. I fly to like the Nis.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
There's a university there and a lot of astrology PhDs
and also con men, so maybe there's some fun to
be had. Or we could do what the Nadi reader
told me to do for penance for my sins as
a milkman. I could go to an offering at a
Hanuman temple, and I have a specific one in mind.
My aunt and family lived in this place, and hopefully
(49:05):
it's where my grandfather finds hired through the.
Speaker 6 (49:08):
House is called gin house.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
I don't know. I mean, I am just throwing ideas
at the wall. We stopped for lunch at this place.
Our drivers at the shloves where they serve giant heaping
plates of rice on banana leaves with curries and chutneys
ladled on top. We eat with our hands in the
traditional style, shoveling the piping hot food into our mouths.
I pairamne with the thumbs up an Indian coke of sorts,
(49:34):
and while the food fills our bellies, it doesn't calm
my nerves, and I grow increasingly irritated about my journey
to the Naughty Shop. A few days later, when I
start reviewing my tape, I realized I've missed a crucial detail.
A woman I'd interviewed previously named Malti Das had walked
(49:55):
into a Naughty Shop a skeptic and walked out a believer,
not because of what she heard from the reader exactly,
but because of what she saw.
Speaker 7 (50:04):
I was looking very disinterested. So that man, I've me, ma'am,
can you read tamb It? I said, yes, very well,
I can read tamb It. Then he started showing the
family to me. After a point, then he said, that's
your father's name start with A.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
They said yes, and then I could see the.
Speaker 7 (50:24):
Name written there of my mother in law, Arakiaswami in devil.
Speaker 12 (50:29):
That was when it hit me.
Speaker 7 (50:30):
Really, you know, I thought, Okay, there is something here.
Speaker 15 (50:33):
They're not bluffing.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Then I feel like an idiot. I hadn't thought to
photograph my leaf. I mean, I don't know if they
would have let me, but maybe there was a miracle
lurking in there. Not in the prophecy, which I thought
was so vague, but in the sorting system. Was there
something beautiful I had missed? When Mark and I talked
(50:55):
about it later at our hotel bar, Mark is a
different perspective on the play.
Speaker 15 (51:00):
Yes, it's basically like a magic trk that we couldn't.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
See there were vi. Yeah, it was like hearing it
was like hearing a magic trek. As he puts it,
it doesn't matter if it's real, because the shop is
in the business of hope and I think about how
he's right, Like, there's so many people that come in
such desperate situations, right, Like if you hear you're like
going to have a comfortable life, You're gonna get a
new car, and you're gonna like, you know, like.
Speaker 15 (51:27):
Four to five years, you're gonna watch her out.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah, I mean like like that probably like sustains a
lot of people, right, that would be such a big
deal to a certain kind of Perth, Chapter eight, Double Dose.
(51:52):
Months later, my memories of Chennai are blur early morning,
strong coffee, ceiling fans that are no match for the heat.
But mostly it's just car ride. Hours in the car
with Argin talking about philosophy and science and our childhoods,
the moments we were too proud, the moments that humbled us,
(52:14):
and how we got here. If Bombay felt like an
old friend whose path had diverged from my own, then
Argin was like a close friend I had lost and
then found again. And it's funny that he's here with
me because I'd forgotten that Argin had been warned by
his Guru that he should not, at any cost dabble
(52:34):
in astrology, something I'm reminded of when my wife Lizzie calls, hey, Lilie, wait,
he'll for your answergure.
Speaker 16 (52:45):
Well, he here is my brother at the end of
the day, and I wasn't going to abandon him.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
But there's a phrase I grew up using in India
cousin brother and cousin sister in joint families. You grew
up thinking of your cousins as closer than just a cousin.
You tie rocky to them or these promised threads that
promise love and protection, and you treat your cousins like
their siblings because they are in a way. And the
(53:14):
fact that Argin is here with me now, despite the
oceans between us, despite the time that's past.
Speaker 5 (53:21):
But having said that, this is my first experience with
astrology as well, so I was actually warned not to
dabble in these kind of.
Speaker 6 (53:32):
Subjects. Is subjecting you to things you've been avoided, just
you know, venting you with yeah, tempting you with taboo subjects. Shame, shame,
that's right. He's the bad influence in my life.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Argin has told me what he's been through, but I
can't imagine it. It is too horrifying. And I admire
him so much. How he somehow pulled together his family
and picked up the shards of his life. Life, and
how he keeps moving forward with such grace and humility.
If my days in Chennai were a blur of endless
(54:09):
car rides, the final pit stops were always a seat
at the hotel bar. Sometimes it was me and Mark,
sometimes it was Argin and me, and occasionally it was
the three of us sitting in a dimly lit patio,
chewing away mosquitoes as we sipped on these fresh lime sodas.
On the tougher days, I'd cut the soda with gin
(54:30):
and bumb a cigarette off of Virgin. And on one
of those nights, Argin told us about his sud Saddi,
the seven and a half years of bad luck brought
on by Saturn that everyone experiences at some point according
to Vade the Astrology, and his seven and a half years.
He tells us, we're considered especially bad.
Speaker 10 (54:53):
Oh well, I experienced a double suck Serty almost and
mine pretty much game.
Speaker 6 (54:58):
Up for so I've had really shit luckily, really shit lucky.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Until this moment, Argin 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 lets us in on just
how hard his life one but my.
Speaker 10 (55:20):
Name DA last year and I'm still trying to understand
the difference, 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.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah, that's crazy. I didn't really because this is India.
Argent jokingly links his misfortune back to what he must
have done in his past lives.
Speaker 6 (55:49):
Obviously that much more than this past August.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
I mean, Argent does not believe in astrology. I never
asked him to get a reading, but trology has happened
to him. The shadow of that seven and a half
years of bad luck. It's 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,
(56:15):
Mark says that 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
(56:37):
about my life about my dad, it is not going
to be with him or our Jim, and it's not
going to be through astrology. Astrology was never the point.
And 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.
(57:02):
I really do, but I don't listen because I'm not
thinking clearly. I haven't been thinking clearly this whole time,
this whole show. Instead, I asked Sapphis to race me
across the state. I drag ardin along, I collect interviews
that will not add up to much, and then just
(57:33):
when my time in India is nearly up, I realize
Mark is right, and I spend sixteen hours in a
car to find meaning where I should have been looking
all along. Thank you so much for not forgetting about
(58:11):
our little show. Skyline Drive is a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeart Podcast. This show is hosted and written by
me Monga Shaiitigudur And yes, I know this episode was
so long, but I'm about to make it longer with
these credits. Mary Full of Sandy is our supervising producer.
How would we get the show out without Mary? The
answer is we would not. Meetropinshahi is our delightful producer
(58:34):
and conducted the interview with Shirty. Mark Lotto is my
excellent story editor and was such a trooper for suffering
with me in India in a city I knew nothing about,
though I did feed him lots of paratas. This episode
was also produced by the insanely talented Anna Rubinova. I
don't know how we could have got through this much
tape without her. Anna, you are a boon to the show.
(58:56):
The super sweet Drove Chevarrau hit the streets for this
episode and collected extra tape for me. This episode was
mixed by my pal at Soundboard. Oh my gosh the Warning.
The warning was read by producer extraordinaire Nadia Raymond, who
won the first ever Audio Pulitzer along with the team
at This American Life. Nadia wants you to listen to
(59:16):
THL's next episode, but I want you to know she's
a badass. I've got to thank my pal Botany for
the theme song and the compositions. Also Azadi Records. How
can I thank Azadi enough? Also my friends Kiman Shou, Suri, Peter,
Matthew Bauer and Motor Sailed and I can't forget my
pal Vage aka Lush Life for lending me his tunes
(59:36):
as well. I am dropping a second mixtape with more
music from Skyline Drive Volume two. It'll be in the
show links, please go check it out. Additional production and
research support from my love Lizzie Jacobs, Someone Rock around
the Clock Buckshie and my beautiful cousin Arjin Buckshi Arjun,
I love you. This show is executive produced from iHeart,
(01:00:00):
My Good Palace, Nikki Etour and Katrina Norvel and a
shout out to Nikki's baby girl Pearl and also Enzo Enzo,
I have not forgotten about you, buddy. Also got to
thank my incredible partners from Kaleidoscope Oswell Listen, Kate Osborne,
Costos Linos, Vahini Shorey You inspire me every day. Special
(01:00:20):
thanks to Ali, Nathan Connell, will and Bob at iHeart
for getting behind the show, Barkley Sorrow Vinshanta, my Kiddos,
Henry and Ruby, my family everywhere, and as always a
big big thank you to my Amma and my dad,
Lalita and Umesh articular, who I thank my lucky stars for.
(01:00:40):
We have one more episode to go, so thank you
so much for listening. I can't tell you how much
it means to me
Speaker 6 (01:01:01):
To christ
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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