Howzzat?

Introduction

Sherlock Holmes with his fancy hat, magnifying glass and pipe always fascinated me. I was glued to every clue Perry Mason worked on. I would read with anticipation as Ganesh (Vasanth) reconstructed a crime with a seemingly simple object. The way these celebrated detectives worked was really captivating—piecing clues together, painstakingly, one piece at a time, sometimes aided by past theories and sometimes devising new techniques to help in the search. 

Probably, it is a thing with all Scorpios. They love the mysteries of the world. So do I. And I have a snoopy Aquarian in me too, who also loves hidden somethings and suspense. At the age when most boys’ fantasies involved picking up a bat and destroying the opposition to win a cricket match for their country, I would fantasise myself as a detective solving a murder mystery with a simple clue.

While that dream of being a detective never materialised, I’m truly grateful to the universe’s way of giving me a chance to be a detective in my own way. Only, there is no violent death that I investigate; it is life—the past, the present and, most importantly, the future, for that’s where one’s hopes and aspirations lie. And yes, I don’t have a Dr Watson or a Vasanth to talk to. It’s myself that I engage with. If people in my inner circle feel that I’m lost most of the time, then they are right. And some of them also know it is the normal state for me.

 This is a slice of my life story—the story of how I go about making my predictions. On different occasions, if I refer to a past prediction of mine, it is only to help you marvel at the amazing accuracy of astrology. My aim is to explain, in simple words, that astrology is more science than art. It is something that can be learnt and taught. In fact, replicated too.

In this book, I will show you the power of astrology through a study—a study of the game of gentlemen. We are talking about cricket and certain important events connected with it. The men mentioned here were destined for greatness and achieved it. But they too cannot achieve more than what is destined. And, yes, you cannot only measure their success quotient, but also predict when life will cease to be magical for them. All of this can be predicted just by looking at the positions of the planets over the horizon when the person was born.

Sports outcomes are some of the most unpredictable things in the world. Investment banks like Commerzbank, UBS and Goldman Sachs tried to predict the 2018 Football World Cup, by simulating factors and conditions used in predicting financial market movements. 

Well, all the three banks couldn’t get it right[1].

 In this book, I’m going to show you how, by just using a handful of variables, the outcome of even such a supposedly ‘unpredictable’ event can be predicted. We will see how the biggest spectacle of ‘the game of glorious uncertainties’ can be a ‘certain’ event.

Contrary to popular belief, astrology is more about logic and less about numbers. The various events and thought processes that led to certain assumptions have been mentioned in the first few chapters. Then the 50 predictions follow. If you are short of time and patience, you can jump directly to the predictions. If you are someone who likes to know how particular conclusions were derived/arrived at, then the chapters leading to the actual predictions would probably interest you.

I will also introduce you to the techniques that aid me and new ideas I have formulated. I also aim to make you see and admire the science in astrology. This book is not aimed at making you an astrologer though. So, I have reserved all the complicated theories and terminologies for a future book dedicated to that.

This book will also show that we are all bound by our karmas. One cannot reap what he hasn’t sown. One cannot achieve more in life than is destined. But, if you are destined for greatness, no one can stop you either. In short, your destiny is pre-written. And one cannot change one’s destiny.

25th June 1983. Tuticorin.

Cricket zoomed into my life when I was eleven. Growing up in the southernmost part of India, until then my heroes had been Kamal Haasan, Ilaiyaraaja and SP Balasubrahmanyam. The only footballer I knew was Pele and never knew sports like cricket and tennis existed. Suddenly, everything changed. India won its first cricket World Cup in 1983 and everyone was talking about Kapil Dev and the game that had established India’s stardom across the world—the game that would eventually become a religion for this nation.

Though cricket was introduced by the British in the 1700s, and India became a test-playing nation in 1932, it was probably this landmark victory that made it a superpower in the sport. The introduction of television only revolutionised it. Cricket had entered into India’s everyday life, slowly and surely. I sat up and took notice too. And, yes, I had a new set of heroes to look up to.

The way this game touches people has always fascinated me. People will not move from a particular chair when a match is on; some will wear their lucky shirt to make their team win, and some will not shave during the whole cricket season. Cricket has the power to make even the strongest of atheists believe in superstitions, at least in India.

My father worked in the Bombay docks (yes, it was Bombay then) and I used to visit him sometimes. We were a large family. I was the eldest with five younger brothers and a sister. As education in Mumbai wasn’t affordable, Mom shifted with the kids to our native place in Tamil Nadu. During one of my visits to Bombay, on a rainy day in 1986, I picked up Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs from the sidewalks of the Churchgate station. It will sound clichéd if I say my life changed forever but, believe me, it did! My fascination for astrology grew after I reached my small hometown. I started collecting and reading as many works on astrology as I could lay my hands upon. The librarian opposite my school was surprised to see a fourteen year old’s interest changing from detective novels to astrology books almost overnight.   

In 1989, I came to Mumbai to do my graduation. I had always been in love with the city. My fascination for this huge megalopolis only grew. During lonely hours at Marine Drive, where I sat and watched gigantic waves of the Arabian Sea strike the huge concrete tetrapods standing in an interlocked pattern on the shore, I would often wonder what I would be doing in my life twenty years later. 

I wanted to provide whatever financial support I could to my family at the earliest. I completed my graduation from Mumbai University in the mid-90s and immediately took up a job as a salesperson with a multinational company, which posted me in the far-off Jabalpur. Thus, in my early twenties, I was working in the largest state in India. Madhya Pradesh hadn’t parted ways with Chattisgarh then. Sometimes, just the travel time from one city to another was a couple of days. With plenty of time on hand, I found myself drifting towards researching various phenomena in astrology, which was fast turning into a passion. I had numerous astrology books for company.

 My intention was very simple: I wanted to know what I would end up doing in my life. Once I learnt how to, I read the charts of hundreds of famous people to see if there were any planetary clues that could show what my career would eventually turn out to be. Besides this, I wanted to know what made someone a filmstar, a musician or a politician. I was also keen to know how sportstars created such a huge impact within a short span in their career. 

Somewhere during those long travels on work, I had a brainwave. I wondered if astrology could help predict the results of events like a World Cup. The euphoria and the pride that surrounded that historic victory by Kapil’s Devils made me look at cricket once again, this time from the perspective of astrology.

In those times, when there was no Google or other websites, the only sources of birth data were the astrology books. It was during the 1996 World Cup that I really made a serious effort to predict the outcome of a sports event. No, I didn’t go and publish it in the papers, and not many would have published the prediction of a twenty-four-year-old learner. It was simply a personal validation of the possibility of using astrology to predict events.

I collated the data on the birth dates of all the cricket captains of the various countries participating in the 1996 World Cup. As it was not possible to find every player’s birth details, I had to make do with the information available about the captains. What was initially a deterrent became a blessing in disguise later when I discovered that the captain’s horoscope is the best indicator of the team’s results.

I found that Arjuna Ranatunga, the captain of the Sri Lankan team, had the best horoscope amongst all the captains. Now, by ‘best’ I mean what I guessed to be outstanding amongst all others at that time, based on certain parameters I was aware of, and on my own limited understanding of astrology in those days. I didn’t know then that there were still many things about the subject to be learned.

I found that Arjuna Ranatunga was born on a full-moon day, which is considered as auspicious. Besides, the burly Lankan captain also had Saturn in its own house, a very powerful planet, so his chances were brighter, I concluded. Interestingly, the Indian captain, Mohd Azharuddin, too, was born on a full-moon day, but Arjuna’s day was better as the full moon was exalted too at that time. Well, that was my theory.

And, you know what? Sri Lanka actually won the World Cup!

I was elated.

Now, I had found my secret mantra for predicting sports events. This was going to be my favourite pastime from now on. But I didn’t realise that even a stopped clock shows the correct time twice a day. The truth dawned upon me three years later in 1999.

Circa 1999

I saw an astrological marvel happening in the World Cup that year. When I collected the birth details of the captains, to my surprise, I found that almost each of them from the major cricketing nations was born on a full-moon day. India’s Mohd Azharuddin, West Indies’s Brian Lara (yes, West Indies was a major cricketing nation then), England’s Alec Stewart, Pakistan’s Wasim Akram, South Africa’s Hansie Cronje, Sri Lanka’s Arjuna Ranatunga—all were born on full-moon days, a pattern too obvious to dismiss as a coincidence for an astrologer. Well, even a minor cricketing nation Zimbabwe’s Alistair Campbell was born on a full-moon day. Only Australia’s Steve Waugh and New Zealand’s Stephen Fleming were not born on full-moon days. I dismissed Australia as Steve Waugh didn’t have a great horoscope anyway.

I thought some full-moon guy would win, probably Brian Lara. After all, he was born on the most powerful full-moon day. He was born with the sun in exaltation and the full moon in Libra. That was Buddha Poornima and it was supposed to be the most auspicious day of the year. He was probably the best bet as the World Cup winner. With the bowling line-up he had in his team, and his batting abilities well backed by some great batsmen, he was the most obvious choice. So, this was my prophecy and I waited to see how the events would unfold.

Unbelievably, for me, Steve Waugh’s Australia won the World Cup after facing defeat and having been on the verge of elimination in the tournament. This was incredible not just for me from the astrological perspective but also from a purely cricketing perspective. There was a time when they had to win seven matches in a row to win the Cup, a feat which seemed nearly impossible, that is, until they actually did it. A team which was on the verge of elimination rose like the phoenix and won every consecutive match they played. 

It was shocking. How had they done that? Steve Waugh’s victory made me ecstatic. Of course, my failed prediction made me a little sad, but is there a better way to run if not from your own failures? I thought there was something in it for me to take lessons from. There was something in Steve Waugh’s horoscope I had missed, which had pushed him to win the World Cup. What was it? Had I overlooked something? How was I to know that I had omitted an entire planet in my analysis? I realised it over a period of time, after a great deal of research.

The new millennium had dawned by now and I had started using MS-Excel for my research work. The invention by the richest man in the world was making life easier for everyone, including me. The various analytics and matrices used in sales helped tabulate the birth data of the sports stars.

During one such tabulation I realised another thing: the emerging film superstars in those years, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan, all three were born in the same year as Steve Waugh—1965. Something had certainly eluded the eye—the year 1965.

I had to move away from the way traditional Indian astrologers practised astrology and based their predictions on mundane events. Indian astrologers never looked beyond Saturn in their calculations. In a later book, I will talk about why this is a problem. Here, let me just say that I started including planets like Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in my calculations. And voila, it worked!

Later, I discovered that the only common factor between Steve Waugh and the three Khans was the planet Pluto. All there of them had Pluto between 23 and 27 degrees in the zodiac sign Leo. This is the point of the deepest exaltation (the best celestial position) for this planet. This marvel happened once in about 260 years. Now, that was something! The Khans and Waugh had something really rare in them and hence could become superstars or win the World Cup.

We all are born different. Many may have exalted planets in their birth chart and achieve successes in their lives, but those with the planets in deepest exaltation achieve that rare distinction and become the biggest achievers. The deepest exaltation indicates the planet reaching a particular degree in a particular zodiac sign. For exzmple, Neptune gets deeply exalted at 25 degrees in Cancer, Taurus, Libra and Sagittarius. There may be many with Neptune in exaltation in their charts, but Shah Rukh Khan is Shah Rukh Khan because he has the planet of illusion, Neptune, in deepest exaltation in his first house (of personality), which makes him a king in the world of showbiz. And isn’t showbiz all about creating alluring illusions?

Steve Waugh’s win also showed me that the planet Pluto had three exaltation points. The second exaltation point was present in Kapil Dev’s birth chart—Kapil Dev, who won the first World Cup for India. The third exaltation point had won it for Steve Waugh and Australia. Well, which was the first one? It happened in 1949–52. We will talk about that phenomenon a little later.

This was the beginning of my long and arduous journey into the mysteries of astrology. I thanked my stars that I had been wrong this time. If I hadn’t been wrong, I wouldn’t have learnt about Pluto. I had formulated some theories and decided to experiment with them during the next World Cup. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. But now I had started taking serious interest in cricket and its connection to my world of astrology. I followed every World Cup since then. I looked at the horoscopes of the players and speculated about the top team that would win the Cup. 

I saw a change in myself where I no longer hated the Australians because they were on a winning spree. Instead, I was highly upset when I felt someone who deserved to be in the Indian team wasn’t there, someone who could win us the World Cup.

Every time my prognosis went wrong, I learnt something new. Every time the Aussies won, I stumbled upon a new discovery. The entire phase from 1996 to 2007 was a huge learning curve for me, especially in sports astrology. I didn’t realise then that all the mistakes I committed would lead to new learning and something even more interesting—something that would make me wonder about the fundamentals of astrology, especially the kind practised in India.